


Underneath the Stars | One-Shots

by andrasteemeraldpetal



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2020-02-04 17:31:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18609217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andrasteemeraldpetal/pseuds/andrasteemeraldpetal
Summary: A series of one-shots following the children of Fingolfin and Feanor from Valinor to Middle-Earth. Follows story beats from fic Underneath the Stars.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note: Sindarized names have been used throughout. Though this was certainly the age of Quenya Elvish, the names used in The Silmarillion and the names I mentally attach to these characters are the Sindarized forms. Quenya (as far as I can Google it) has been used for certain terms of endearment.

_Years of the Trees 1490_

Fingon had been pacing for so long half the candles in the house had gone out. The other half were low and guttering, casting strange shadows in the familiar space.

It had been a dreadful day, and it would not be over until Fingon finally saw Maedhros, held him, heard him speak. At the sentencing there had been such anguish on Maedhros’ face, a depth of pain Fingon had never seen on him before. Everything about him had been tense as Fingon watched him across the ring; even his steps as he had left with his father and brothers had been short and heavy. It had been awful to see Maedhros so transformed, awful to be powerless to comfort him.

Fingon ceased his pacing and leaned his back against the wall, gazing out into the garden and the fields beyond. The pale light Telperion and the stars painted upon the world could not pierce the darkness that had fallen over the house.

There was a soft knock at the door and Fingon was like an arrow finally loosed from the bowstring. Standing before him, Maedhros looked even worse than he had at the sentencing. His proud bearing had collapsed, everything about him folding into the middle of his body. He could not even raise his gaze for more than a moment. His lips were a thin line and the crease in his brow seemed to be carved there. Even when Fingon opened the door, Maedhros did not move.

It had been a long time since he had had to invite Maedhros in. Was there nothing that would remain unchanged after what the day had wrought?

“Come in,” Fingon said. He closed the door as Maedhros stepped into the entryway. For several long moments, the house was as silent as it had been when Fingon was alone.

As Fingon laid a hand on Maedhros’ crossed arms, Maedhros retreated a step.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Fingon asked gently.

Maedhros briefly met his gaze. It was too dark to see the bronze of his eyes. “Fingon, I…”

“You don’t have to tell me now if you don’t want to. You should get some rest and we can talk in the morning.” Imagining a night in each other’s arms was a balm on Fingon’s heart.

“Fingon, I came to say goodbye,” Maedhros said, the smallest his voice had ever been.

Startled into silence, Fingon stared, unsure whether he wanted to move toward or away from Maedhros. He willed Maedhros to look at him, so he could find something in his eyes or his face that would make all these decisions for him. If Maedhros wanted him, Fingon would offer himself. If he spoke, Fingon would listen.

Instead, the silence between them only grew more unwieldy. It filled the entryway of the house and began to push them apart. Finally, Fingon fell back against the wall, crushed by it.

“What?” he said, and as soon as the word was out of his mouth, he feared Maedhros would just say the words again. Fingon could not bear to hear them.

Maedhros flinched. “I’m going with my father.”

Now that the silence had been cracked, Fingon felt emboldened to strike it again. “Why?”

“Because he asked me to,” Maedhros said, an edge in his voice. “All of us have agreed to follow our father.”

Fingon wanted to flee the suffocating feeling rising in the narrow hall, but he was too afraid that Maedhros would let himself out the door. Especially after Fingon asked his next question.

The words had lived in his mind since all this had started. He had come so close to saying them so many times he thought they might be etched on his tongue, that one day Maedhros would taste them and they would be forced to confront this, each other. Fingon had tried so hard to keep this to himself, to keep the peace even if it meant living in denial. And now Maedhros was here to ruin it himself, oblivious to Fingon’s efforts. Now that they were at the foot of this shadow looming over them, Fingon refused to placate Maedhros any longer.

“Do you think your father was right in his actions?” Fingon asked, standing up straighter. “Do you side with him in _all_ of this?”

Maedhros’ head snapped up. “Of course not! But… Do you never feel trapped here? Like we’re being watched? Like we’re being kept too close?”

“No, I don’t. _Here_ I have a family and a man who love me.” Fingon stepped into the wide sphere of space Maedhos had given himself. “And if I did feel closed in, I wouldn’t further reduce my freedom by willingly going into exile.”

“He’s my father, Fingon!”

“And what of me!”

Maedhros escaped the hallway into the large salon that dominated the front of the house. He silently surveyed the room before he turned back to face Fingon.

“Are you truly saying that you would not forsake me for your family’s wishes?”

“My family has never made such a demand on me,” Fingon said, coming to the end of the hall, still guarding the door. “If they did, that would only prove to me that they were not worthy of my loyalty, not when they know how much I love you.

“Stay here tonight, Maedhros. Think this through. And tomorrow I will go with you to face your father if you want.”

“This isn’t a discussion, Fingon.” Maedhros turned his back to him. “The decision has been made.”

“Not a discussion?” Fingon heard the tears in his voice, felt them begin to well in his eyes. “Knowing that this affects my life as much as it does yours— _our life_ —you think you get to make this choice without speaking to me?”

Maedhros said nothing, did not turn around. The shadows settled so easily on him. In the days before the sentencing, Fingon had watched the dimming of Maedhros’ light. Now, Fëanor’s will threatened to eclipse it entirely. If nothing else, Fingon could help Maedhros protect his true radiance, help keep it safe so one day it would bring Maedhros back to him.

“For how long?” Fingon asked. Maedhros’ silence gave him his answer. “Twelve years. Ask me to wait for you.”

A shudder worked through Maedhros’ spine. Once he recovered, he walked through to the dining room and to the back door to let himself into the garden.

Part of Fingon wanted to let him go. But as he felt his heart begin to race, to break open and bleed inside him at the mere thought of Maedhros leaving, he was too afraid to not do whatever it took to save them. He followed Maedhros outside.

“Just ask me to wait for you. Tell me you love me and I’ll say yes,” Fingon begged.

Maedhros halted and glanced over his shoulder. “Do whatever you want, Fingon.”

Those careless words struck straight to Fingon’s heart and he gasped in pain. “How dare you, Maedhros…”

Maedhros finally turned around, his face sparkling with the starlight reflected in his tears. “What are you going to do? Curse me? Do it!”

With every word, Maedhros closed the space between them until they were close enough to touch. He stood a head taller than Fingon, the anguish in his face and his body overwhelming Fingon’s resolve. It was true: he was going to leave. And for all Fingon’s desperation to keep them together, he would never offer to follow him in this.

Fëanor had held a naked blade to his father’s heart. Fingon was not certain Maedhros was not guilty of the same violence now.

“Say your words, Fingon,” Maedhros said.

Trembling, Fingon looked up into his face. “I love you, Maedhros.”

Maedhros flinched and more tears fled down his face. He turned halfway around, then turned back. Seizing Fingon’s face in both his hands, he kissed him. Hard and desperate. It hurt, and Fingon would have given anything to make it go on forever.

By the time Fingon reached for Maedhros’ collar to clutch him close, to never let him go, Maedhros had backed away from him. He turned around and made his way to the back gate of the garden.

“Maedhros,” Fingon tried to call, but his voice was decimated. He rallied. “Maedhros!”

Fingon fell to his knees. His heart, long safe in Maedhros’ hands, had been torn and crushed and ripped out of him... And neither his heart nor those hands were coming back.

* * *

Aredhel knocked again on Fingon’s door. The small swell of worry that had brought her here grew and grew the longer she waited. Finally, she opened the door for herself.

“Fingon,” she called into the dark house. Something in the air was charged and heavy, compounding Aredhel’s fear. She called his name again up the stairs as she walked through the house though it was impossible he had not heard her already. There was nothing but silence as she reached the dining room, no sign of anyone having been here, nothing amiss.

With a heavy exhale, Aredhel ran her hand over the tablecloth. She touched the lid of the fine silver urn on the sideboard and opened a curtain to let in some light. There in the garden, sitting in the grass, was Fingon.

Aredhel dashed outside. “Fingon, thank goodness! I was starting to worry…”

As Aredhel knelt at his side, she saw the pallor in his face, the wide stare of his eyes.

“Fingon?” she said, laying a hand on his shoulder.

Fingon jumped and whipped his head to look at her, as if he had not noticed her there until she touched him. He had no time to hide the agony in his face, his twisted mouth, his huge blue eyes, his furrowed brow. Faced so plainly with his pain, Aredhel felt tears spring into her eyes. Whatever she had imagined in her worry, it had not been this.

“He left…” Fingon said breathlessly. “He left!”

Aredhel caught him in her arms as he began to weep. She felt every muscle twitch in his back as his sorrow wracked his body. As she held him tighter, her own tears disappeared, replaced by fire and anger.

Maedhros. _Fëanor._

 

“This is most unlike them,” Anairë said, tracing a hand across Fingolfin’s shoulders as she walked behind him. She placed a covered bowl on the table, the final addition to the fully laid out family breakfast they had planned. On this morning when they could begin to put this misery behind them, they had wanted to be together.

Fëanor’s sentencing meant they could all breathe easily again. It had made no one happy to see it come to exile, but they could not deny they were relieved to have it all finally over. Fingon and Aredhel’s unexplained absence was a pebble dropped in the finally-still waters of the House of Fingolfin.

“I’ll go fetch them,” Turgon said. He had resigned himself long ago to his role as his siblings’ keeper. He kissed Elenwë on the forehead and waved to Idril where she sat playing on the floor with Argon. She was too transfixed by her game to notice, but Argon waved on her behalf.

Turgon stepped out onto the quiet streets and made the longer walk to Aredhel’s. When he discovered she was not at home, he journeyed back up the hill to Fingon’s. He found the door just short of closed and let himself in.

“Fingon, I never thought I would see the day when _you_ would have to be summoned for breakfast,” Turgon called into the seemingly empty house.

“Turgon?” Aredhel’s panicked voice came from upstairs.

Quickly ascending the steps, Turgon followed Aredhel’s voice and then the sound of splashing water.

“What—” Turgon could not even qualify the rest of his question when he found Aredhel crouched at the head of the bathtub, her hand on Fingon’s forehead as he lay fully dressed and half submerged in water. Fingon was ash grey and lifeless.

“We need more hot water,” Aredhel said.

At a loss to do anything else, Turgon picked up the empty bucket and took it to the hot water pump in the corner of the room. The sound of the running water filled his ears and the occupation of his hands soothed him a little. When he turned back around, he found the scene exactly the same. The room was silent again and Turgon was only more perturbed at the sight of Fingon so still, unchanged. For all his knowledge and all his wisdom, Turgon had no idea what to do.

“What happened?” he asked, carefully pouring the water at the foot of the tub. At the sensation of heat, Fingon’s brow briefly creased.

“I found him sitting outside in the garden this morning,” Aredhel said, lowering her voice though Fingon showed no sign of consciousness. Turgon had never seen Aredhel so grave or so focused. “Maedhros left with Fëanor.”

She leaned forward, reached her hands into the water, and took Fingon’s hand. She held him for a long moment before she let out a frustrated sigh.

Turgon could barely look at Fingon in the state he was in. It felt invasive, somehow, to see his elder brother brought so low, like he should not be here. It took constant effort not to turn from the room and run.

“What’s wrong with him?” he asked.

“I don’t know!” After raising her voice, Aredhel pressed her lips together until she could master some calm. “He’s as cold as ice, Turgon. And this isn’t working.”

Turgon knelt beside the tub and took Fingon’s other hand. Despite the hot water, Fingon’s flesh was unnaturally cold. There was only one other body in Arda that felt like this. Turgon had seen her once, a long time ago, when all the House of Finwë had gone to see and remember her. Miriel, whose spiritless body lay beneath a dome of white flowers in the garden of Lorien, who had given her soul to the Halls of Mandos, spent of all joy and strength.

“Fingon, please,” Turgon said, squeezing his brother’s hand. He stared into Fingon’s unmoving face, the sight slowly blurring with tears. “Fingon. _Hano…”_

He looked at Aredhel, tears streaming down her face as she whispered in Fingon’s ear, her hands on him holding him tight. With his other hand, Turgon felt Fingon’s chest, waiting. It was a weak, trembling thing, but there was a heartbeat inside him.

“I’m going to get mother and father,” Turgon said.

“Turgon,” Aredhel said as he stood to go. “Is there nothing we can do? I just… I just can’t bear for them to see him like this.”

“I know.”

Turgon sprinted back to his parents’ house, finally allowing his fear to course through his body. When he came into the house, no one was in the dining room. Nothing on the table had moved since he had left. The silence… it was the same silence that had filled Fingon’s house.

Holding his breath as he moved through the familiar halls, Turgon finally found everyone save his father in the hall outside the Fingolfin's study, staring at the closed door.

“Finwë is here,” Elenwë said, holding Idril tight in her arms. Her eyes grew wider as she looked over him.

“They were arguing,” Argon said, his expression hard.

Anairë was silent. She stood closest to the door, her fingers pressed against her mouth. The past days had wrought so much distress already, and Turgon felt his throat constrict against his words. He did not want to deliver more pain to his mother.

“ _Amillë_ ,” Turgon said, coming to stand right before her so he could speak quietly. She looked up and he knew she saw the fear in his face. “I need you to come with me.”

Despite whatever was unfolding behind a closed door in her own home, she followed him without question. They went straight to Fingon’s house, a few stares falling upon them as they rushed through the streets.

“Upstairs,” Turgon said as he opened the front door for her. She ran past him and up the stairs. A hundred worried thoughts about Fingon, about his father, about his family began to settle on his finally-still body and Turgon could not follow her. All of this was supposed to be over…

As he leaned back against the wall in the entryway, he heard his mother scream.


	2. Chapter 2

_Years of the Trees 1490_

It was dark when Fingon opened his eyes. He felt raw and cold from head to heel, as if a fire had burned through everything inside him. As he tried to move, he found himself buried under several heavy blankets. Too weak to struggle with them, he only turned his head and saw the bed empty beside him. Now he remembered… all of Maedhros’ awful words, the shadows on his face, their final kiss. Fingon remembered it all and felt nothing.

The door opened and it took effort to raise his gaze. Fingon opened his mouth to speak, but he had no voice—something else among the wreckage inside him.

“ _Eruhantalë._ ” Aredhel said, sitting on the edge of the mattress. She laid her hand to the side of his face and he recoiled, as much from her hand as from her words. There was nothing to be thankful for… and he still desperately clung to the memory of Maedhros clutching his face in his hands, kissing him. It was all he had and it hurt and he was not ready for anyone else to touch him and take it away.

She had held him earlier… he remembered weeping in her arms, her voice whispering gentle things he could not hear over the sound of his sorrow.

“How are you feeling?” Her voice had an affected gentleness that was strange on her; it confirmed to Fingon that he looked as weak and awful as he felt. If so, she had her answer.

She frowned at his silence. “You gave us an awful fright.”

He frowned back, a question.

“After you collapsed, Turgon came to help,” she said. “When it seemed like there was nothing… Mother was here, but she was in such a state at the sight of you. She’s downstairs.”

“They know?” Fingon whispered.

“They know,” Aredhel said. “All of Tirion watched Fëanor’s sons follow him out of the city.”

Fingon had no memory of what had happened after Maedhros left. The world, his life had all turned to nothingness—until his sister had come for him. Looking up at Aredhel, at the intense expression in her face, he finally felt something deep inside the scorched remains of his body. It tried to reach out to her and then it crumbled to dust.

Fingon felt the echo of a heartbeat in the chasm in his breast, both too little and too much. It hurt, wounded beyond repair. This pain was his to carry for eternity. Instead of love and life, he had this. Because he had not been enough. In the face of choosing what was right, he had not been enough.

“Go,” he said, little more than a breath scraping up his throat. He wanted to close his eyes and never open them again, and he did not want Aredhel to see. Fingon felt a tear fall down his cheek. He wondered for how long his waking moments would be filled with only pain and weeping. It cast an eternal shadow, with no light in sight. Life without him…

_Maedhros._

Even thinking his name dissolved Fingon’s meagre strength and he began to cry, a sob wrenched from his wasted throat.

“Oh Fingon.” Aredhel sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his shoulders for as long as he would let her.

 

The main floor of Fingon’s house had been transformed overnight to an encampment of the entire House of Fingolfin. Anairë and Argon busied themselves in the kitchen, filling the house with the smell of herbs and cleansing the close air with smoke from the fire and steam from the pots. Argon still had an angry knot in his brow that had not moved since he had returned from watching Fëanor lead his sons and his father from the city the day before.

Turgon sat with Idril, quietly playing among the cushions on the floor of the salon. Elenwë had gone out to the market with a list from Anairë. They hoped that their neighbours might be less inclined to ask her any questions of the past days’ disturbances. Since before Fëanor’s sentencing all anyone had wanted to talk about was the House of Finwë, and now it would be another long while before they were free.

“Where’s Father?” Aredhel asked as she marched down the stairs, before anyone could ask her how Fingon was.

“Outside,” Argon replied.

Without losing a step in her quick stride Aredhel crossed the house and let herself through the door to the garden. She ignored Turgon’s and her mother’s unwavering gazes on her. Neither of them had been able to face Fingon again since seeing the utter devastation that had been brought upon their brother and son. Anairë had helped Aredhel lift him out of the bathtub and deliver him to bed; she had never stopped crying during the whole endeavor. Turgon had not come back up at all and even now, a day later, looked pale and haunted, a shadow in his blue eyes. Only Aredhel had been able to spend any great amount of time beside Fingon’s lifeless body, to see his joyless waking moments. She knew it was her anger that protected her, but now it was burning her behind the shield it had set between her and the world. She had to let some of it out.

It was a rainy day—one small mercy at least, for a glorious day would have been too much to face in their great grief. Fingolfin stood under an arched hedgeway at the back of the garden. He held his tightly clenched fists at his sides, his face a hard mask not unlike the one Fëanor had worn in the Ring of Doom. Aredhel was surprised to see him dressed so formally, his hair pulled back in ornate braids from his temples. He did not turn to look at Aredhel as she approached him. He only asked, “How is he?”

“He’s awake,” Aredhel said. “He’s a wreck.”

Fingolfin flinched. “And how are you?”

“I’m so furious with them—with all of them—that I could scream,” she said, her voice measured and low only with great discipline.

“I know, _elenya_ ,” he said.

Aredhel glanced up at him, her valiant father. Standing here in the shadows and barely breathing, betrayed by his brother, by his father, his eldest son heartbroken and fading. A shiver ran up her spine as the shield of her anger cracked.

“Father—”

“You should go for a long ride. Clear your head,” Fingolfin said. “We will watch over him until you return.”

“What about you, Father?” She frantically blinked back the tears that had begun to well in her eyes.

“There’s nothing I can do. Ministers of Tirion have called for a council and now that…” Fingolfin closed his eyes and exhaled slowly through his nose. “Go, Aredhel. For both of us.”

Aredhel nodded and tried to assume a hardened expression as her father turned and walked past her, briefly touching his hand to her shoulder. He was shaking.

* * *

Fingon squinted against the golden light shining through the open curtains. They had not been open before now, and Fingon cursed Aredhel and Argon both, knowing it had to be at least one of them who had done it. He turned onto his side, away from the light, but even the warmth shining on the bed was too much.

Turning back to face the window, Fingon shaded his eyes and moved gingerly to the edge of the mattress. He slid his legs out from under the blankets and pushed himself up to sitting. The light of Laurelin had not made the room that warm after all and Fingon shivered as the air touched his skin. As his dizziness subsided, Fingon blinked and the bright world came into focus.

With a loud, crystalline song, a blackbird landed on the windowsill. It hopped and showed the red streak in its wing, hopped again and seemed to look Fingon in the eyes, then hopped once more and flew away.

Fingon watched it, momentarily enchanted. When it took off, it was as if all the hope in his body was crumpled and dropped into the pit of his stomach. As he watched the bird disappear into the too-bright sky, Fingon felt a headache blossom in the front of his brain. He seized the edges of the open curtains and pulled them shut.

_Do whatever you want, Fingon._

He wanted to lie in the dark alone. He wanted to lie in the dark with Maedhros’ long, strong body in the bed beside him. He wanted the last of his emotions to finally join the ruin of everything else inside him so he could be free from his misery, free from the memory of his happiness, free from the bonds of love that constricted him so painfully.

Fingon laid back down. Hidden from the light, from the gaze of the Valar and Iluvatar Himself, he wished for all their gifts to leave him. He wished for utter darkness.

 

Turgon wanted very badly not to be sitting at this table. Not to hear echoes of the questions he asked himself over and over, had been asking himself ever since that first day when he found Fingon unconscious and unresponsive in the bathtub, faced Aredhel’s huge, terrified eyes, heard his mother scream. He had not seen Fingon since. He had always managed to beg to run an errand instead, or insisted on staying with Idril while Elenwë was more helpful than he could ever be. The truth was he was terrified. All day, every day for these past weeks he had felt his heart trembling in his breast, and he did not know how much longer he could hide it.

Argon descended from Fingon’s chambers, delivered the untouched tray of food to the kitchen, and sat down, visibly wilting in his chair. He set his elbow on the table and balanced his head in his hand, as if that were the only way he could be upright a moment longer.

Elenwë placed a beaker of fragrant tea in front of him and Argon gratefully wrapped his hand around it, even managing a smile.

“How is he?” Elenwë was the only one strong enough to still ask it. Argon, Turgon, and Aredhel sat in silence around the table, making or not making eye contact with each other and sharing all their thoughts that way.

“Awful,” Argon said, frowning and leaning back in his chair. The lines held in his face for a long moment. “He didn’t eat anything. He had closed the curtains, so at least he got out of bed, I suppose. But he didn’t stir when I went in.”

“It’s like Maedhros ripped him in half,” Aredhel said. “I can’t—”

Whatever she had been about to say, Aredhel pressed her lips firmly against it, and Turgon knew there were few things his sister was unwilling to say. Perhaps it was something terrible or cruel—no matter what it was, Maedhros deserved it.

Turgon looked down at the table to hide the wrath in his face; if Aredhel was showing self-restraint so should he.

“Stay here awhile, Argon,” Elenwë said. “Eat something. Rock the baby. I’ll sit with Fingon tonight.”

“Thank you.” Argon scrubbed his hands against his face and leaned forward on his elbows again. “I was dreading going home.”

There was only one candle on the table and one in the salon, dimly lighting the house. All the House of Fingolfin was becoming too comfortable in the dark.

“How are your parents?” Elenwë asked. “I understand your mother was here when I was out. I’m sorry I missed her.”

“They’re both miserable in their own ways,” Aredhel said. “Mother went up to see Fingon, but she didn’t say anything when she came down.”

“At home they barely speak,” Argon said. “When Father isn’t in the study, Mother is, looking for something that will help heal Fingon. And when she isn’t reading she’s at the temple praying to Nienna.”

Aredhel sighed loudly and combed her hand through the front of her loose hair. “What are we going to do?”

“Is there anything we _can_ do?” Argon countered.

This was what Turgon had been afraid of in the long years of Fëanor’s increasing wrath. And while he had suspected the flames were coming, Fingon had fallen deeper and deeper in love, Aredhel had done whatever she wanted, Argon had practiced at the sword as if it were no more than a game. Everyone, even Elenwë, had dismissed his fears and now here they were: blindsided by a misery that Turgon had been carrying for years. That their perfect happiness was going to end and they were unprepared for the fallout.

“Turgon?”

He glanced up at Elenwë. “Sorry. I was far away. I’ll make something to eat.”

Another excuse to remove himself from everyone. He returned to the table with pieces of crusty bread spread with marinated vegetables. Small bites were taken, but they did not finish it. Argon went home with Aredhel, though Turgon was not certain he would find a more peaceful place there than he would at home. There had been a fire burning in Aredhel’s eyes since this had all started… a fire that had burned in others of the House of Finwë and which Turgon did not care to see again.

Turgon and Elenwë saw them to the door and once alone eased themselves onto the cushions in the salon. These past few weeks they were here more often than they were at their own house. Idril was sleeping in a cot by the window, unbothered by the farewell kisses from her uncle and aunt.

Elenwë took his hand and brushed his palm with her thumb, entwined their fingers, held him tight. “You need to see him, Turgon.”

He barely stopped himself from pulling away and showing her how uncomfortable he truly was. “No, I… you’ll be better company.”

“He’s your brother,” Elenwë said. She moved over to sit close beside him, laid her hand on his chest and felt his heart hammering. The minute pressure of her hand threatened to break him open. “I know you’ve been avoiding him, _meldonya._ He wants to see you.”

“He doesn’t speak to Aredhel or Argon or even acknowledge them,” Turgon said, moving away from her, regretting moving away from her. If watching all of this had taught him nothing else, it was that he should hold his loved ones closer. “There’s no reason why he would want to see me.”

“Why not?”

“Because—” Turgon stopped himself. He clenched his jaw against the rest of the words rushing into his mouth.

Elenwë stared deep into him, made sure he was looking at her and saw the hurt in her eyes. For all her other efforts at conversation this evening, she did not need to say this out loud. _Why won’t you tell me?_

“Years ago I begged Fingon not to pursue Maedhros.” With that, Turgon loosed the memory he had been fighting to keep at bay into his mind. Fingon had raised his voice to him, and few things had disturbed Turgon more in all his life.

Her mouth fell open, but she said nothing.

“I told him Maedhros was too proud, too careless. That he didn’t deserve the trust Fingon was putting in him. I told him Maedhros would only hurt him. We argued and then we never spoke of it again.”

Elenwë reached across the space between them and took his hand. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I felt awful,” Turgon said. “Fingon was so upset and I… I don’t want Fingon to look at me and hear that argument in his head. I don’t want him to feel worse, I don’t want him to feel defensive, I… I don’t think he wants to see me.”

“You don’t want Fingon to feel those things, or _you_ don’t want to feel those things?”

Turgon squeezed her hand and dropped his gaze to the floor, hiding his tears. It achieved nothing; within moments, the tears that were finally free turned into sobs. The tears he had never shed after Fingon had raised his voice to him all the years ago. The tears he had never shed as he sat on the edge of the bed while Elenwë, pregnant with Idril, slept peacefully, so afraid that he had brought a child into a dangerous world he could not protect her from. The tears he had not shed that day he found Aredhel and Fingon, certain his brother was gone.

He had been right to be afraid. He had been right to hate Maedhros Fëanorion. And what was his reward? To sit here sobbing and helpless, knowing his brother was suffering and there was nothing he could do.

Ever merciful, Elenwë sat with him until he was calm again and then she went up to Fingon’s bedside. In the silence Turgon heard the echo of their argument, years ago in this very room. That awful thought was all that filled his mind as he considered that Fingon was not healing and could still fade away. He went upstairs.

Fingon’s chambers were so dark Turgon could hardly see where Fingon was amidst the mass of blankets. Someone had lit a soothing incense, either Elenwë or Argon before her. She stood up from the high-backed chair at the bedside and silently left the room, trailing her hand across his chest as she left. Turgon sat down.

There was only the softest sound of breathing. Believing Fingon to be asleep, Turgon gently took his hand and was surprised when Fingon squeezed his fingers.

“I’m so sorry, Fingon,” Turgon whispered. “I should have…”

He heard a sniffle and a shaky exhale in the dark.

“There’s so much I should have done,” Turgon said. “I love you, _hano_. I’m here now and I will never leave your side.”

Fingon gripped his hand and started to cry. With a voice hardly recognizable for how strained it was, he said, “It hurts so much.”

“I know.” Turgon massaged Fingon’s cold hand, willing some life back into it. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

“Nothing,” Fingon said, a sob hitching his voice. “There’s nothing.”

Turgon climbed onto the bed and laid down on his side in the narrow space beside Fingon. Still holding his hand, Turgon reached his other arm over Fingon’s back to touch his shoulder. Years and years ago, when they had both been small, they had laid under the covers together playing, conspiring, keeping each other safe from pretend dangers, from storms banging outside their window. As they had grown, Turgon had come to convince himself that it was Fingon’s natural and brilliant joy that had caused their parents to have their first two children so close in age—nothing was to be done by convention among the sons of Finwë. Fingon so carefree and happy, easy to smile, and Turgon so thoughtful and anxious, sometimes touted as wise and sometimes as worrisome. If Fingon could not be happy… what chance did Turgon have? And without Fingon’s easy happiness reflecting onto Turgon’s guarded mask, who would love him?

Two little boys raised in a realm of peace now two grown men staring into the deepest dark of the world. Turgon let another tear fall down his cheek and squeezed Fingon’s hand.

“You were right,” Fingon said.

“I never wanted so badly to be wrong.”

“I still love him.”

“It will get better.”

“How can you know that?”

“I don’t.”

Fingon scoffed. “If you don’t know what hope is there for me?”

Turgon moved the hand that rested on Fingon’s back to touch his cheek. He felt Fingon’s rushing tears and the feverish heat of his skin in the moment before Fingon recoiled from him. “I have to just believe because… because I can’t imagine a life that doesn’t have… I need you, Fingon. I’m so scared we’re going to lose you.”

Fingon clutched his hand even tighter. “I’m so tired, Turgon.”

“Then rest. I’ll watch over you.”

Whatever calm finally came over Fingon claimed Turgon too. Even in sleep they never let go of each other, a childhood safety that allowed them both to find peace.

* * *

It had already been long dark, but there was a knock at the door. Fingon moved—still slowly after these past months—across the house to answer it. It had been strange to have his house full of people for so long, and now it was strange to have it so empty. Echoes sometimes struck him as he moved through the house and made him pause. His family had lived here, Maedhros had lived here, and now it was just him…

He no longer imagined he would find Maedhros around some corner, no longer hoped for him to return. The shock hit him all at once as he opened the door.

Nerdanel.

"Hello, Fingon," she said with an incline of her head. She wore a hood over her red hair and glanced quickly over her shoulder. "May I come in?"

Fingon stepped aside to let her through the door and closed it after her. He had to brace both hands against the door to catch himself. Hope, fear, thoughts of Maedhros all loosed through him and he could hardly bear them. He followed Nerdanel into the house, but neither of them sat down.

There was so much resemblance between Nerdanel and Maedhros. Not just their fiery hair, but their steady, bronze gaze, their high cheekbones, their uneasiness in silence. Nerdanel glanced about the salon and bit the corner of her lip as she pushed back her hood.

“I heard you were on the mend and I… I asked your mother if I might visit you.”

Fingon tried not to resent being treated like a child. He had spent weeks in bed, reliant on others for his survival, had shuffled around his own house under supervision and been hauled back to his feet more than once.

“You have been in my thoughts ever since…” Nerdanel looked at the floor. “Ever since they left.”

“May I get you something?” Fingon said, a useless contribution, a flex of an old muscle that was one of the few he had left.

“Oh, uh,” Nerdanel recomposed herself as Fingon watched her, pulled herself back from the thought of her children leaving. It was an impressive feat that made Fingon tired just to see it. “I would have a glass of wine if you’re having one.”

Fingon nodded and left Nerdanel in the salon to pour two glasses of white wine. When he returned, she had removed her cloak and sat down, pulling a cushion protectively onto her lap. They each took a glass and with her empty hand Nerdanel gripped his arm.

“I’m so sorry, Fingon,” she said, staring straight into him. With those bronze eyes…

“And your loss, my lady. I…” He was about to say that he could not imagine. but the grief still clung to his body sitting here now—it gripped his heart in fits and starts, weighed down his every limb, filled his stomach so he had to remind himself to eat, made him tremble.

Nerdanel clinked her glass against his and took a deep drink. Fingon blinked back the tears that had so easily swelled in his eyes and drank as well.

“I have heard all of Fëanor’s words these past years,” she said. “To hear them come out of my sons’ mouths… I don’t know how to bear that.”

“I told Maedhros I loved him and he left.”

“I told them all I loved them. I begged them. What is love compared to Fëanor’s ambition?” Nerdanel’s glass was empty.

Fingon finished his as well, already light-headed, gripping to Nerdanel as if there was some strength to be found among their shared pain. “What do we do now?”

“I yelled and I screamed and I cursed. I don’t know what’s left for me but to go back to my life,” she said, leaning back among the cushions but not letting him go. “Hammer and chisel and beat my feelings and wait, I suppose.”

“I wept and I cried and I fell into oblivion,” Fingon said.

“Perhaps it’s time to try yelling, screaming, and cursing.”

Fingon looked up at her and they both smiled at the preposterousness of the thought. It was equal parts balm and pain to look into Nerdanel’s open expression, her bright eyes, and see the best parts of Maedhros. “I think that would break me.”

“Hammer and chisel then,” she said sincerely, moving her hand to the side of his face. For the first time in a long time, a hand that landed on his skin was as cold as he was. “Come to the studio whenever you want, day or night. Free yourself from the ghosts in your house. Fill the silence. Find your voice again.”

Fingon nodded. “Thank you, my lady.”

Nerdanel picked up his hand and kissed it. “I hope I will see you soon, Fingon.”

After Nerdanel had seen herself to the door and waved him goodbye, Fingon laid down among the cushions and fell asleep as he had often done before, too exhausted to go upstairs to bed.


	3. Chapter 3

_Turgon leaned against the wall that extended the length of the cliffs by the harbour in Alqualondë, breathing deeply of the sea salt air. He was already barely listening to his brothers' conversation when he became utterly distracted by a distant sparkle on the water._

_As he stared, the radiance took the form of a woman. She was sitting on the edge of the small but fine sailboat, leaning over the edge to touch the waves. Her golden hair was loose in the wind, a white jewel on her brow. She was laughing, and though the distance and the din of the harbour was too much for Turgon to hear her, the mere thought of it silenced everything else inside him._

_He did not know how long he had been staring when her laughing ceased and she raised her blue eyes to look directly at him._

_Turgon pushed himself away from the wall and quickly turned around, feeling a betraying blush spread hotly across his face._

_"Turgon? Are you all right?"_

_He glanced up and saw Fingon and Argon watching him, neither of them making an effort to hide their amusement._

_"Fine," Turgon said, and he had hardly finished the syllable before both his brothers were leaning over the wall, studying the horizon to discover what had undone their endlessly poised sibling. Argon clapped one hand on Fingon's shoulder and pointed with the other. They conferred with their facial expressions and Turgon felt his embarrassment only growing hotter._

_"She's pretty," Argon said. "Your lady water nymph."_

_Fingon shaded his eyes as he gazed out at the sea. "She's gorgeous."_

_"Are you going to talk to her?" Argon asked, leaning closer._

_Turgon turned on his heel and started walking back up the way they had come._

* * *

The wind blowing against Turgon’s face was too cold to be the sea. Eyes tightly shut, he twisted his body to brace his shoulder against the chill and felt a hand tightly squeeze his. He immediately regretted moving as pain blossomed across the whole left side of his body, throbbing to engulf the right side as well.

“ _Atto_!”

He blinked open his eyes and saw Idril beside him, and Aredhel immediately behind her, wrapping them both in her fur-lined cloak. Idril’s eyes and face were red, but she was not crying now. Aredhel was terribly pale, but otherwise stoic. When Turgon looked at her, she rested her cheek on the top of Idril’s head and released a shaky exhale.

Something had happened… Whatever had been extinguished in him when he lost consciousness began to flicker to life again: fear, pain, panic, heartbreak.

The wind rose and buffeted the walls of the tent around them. Idril hid herself against Aredhel’s chest but did not let go of his hand. He squeezed her fingers and moved to prop himself up with his left arm, but found it bound tight against his body. He dropped back down onto the fur mat that had been laid beneath him.

“Lie still, Turgon,” Aredhel said, reaching a hand from under the protection of her cloak and touching his shoulder. “You broke your arm and you hit your head. Does anything else hurt?”

Idril entwined her slender fingers with his and held him tight. He could hear her breath hitching as if she were sobbing. The least he could do was not let Idril see him in pain again.

A headache coiled around his head, pounding in his temples, but through the dark haze in his mind he remembered Idril screaming.

Where was Elenwë? Where was Fingon? Where was anyone but the three of them here in this tent?

A small voice deep in his heart said it, just loud enough to send a ripple into his blood, his bones, his very soul. That they were dead.

“We were climbing, do you remember?” Aredhel said. “The icefall.”

The Noldor had camped at the bottom of that blinding white climb for a long time as they strategized a way over it. In the end it had been decided that Turgon and Aredhel would lead the children and those already weakened by the perils of the Helcaraxë up first, to be followed by the rest of the host and finally Argon and Fingolfin, who would be last to ensure everyone’s safety. They should have learned by now that the grinding ice had no care for plans or best intentions. As they climbed, a storm had rolled over them, blinding them, beating them, loosing the banks of hardened snow down upon them.

In the violent wind Idril had lost her grip of the rope and crashed down into Elenwë beneath her, knocking them both past Turgon, who had caught Idril’s hand. Pulled between her father’s hold on her hand and her mother’s grip where she had caught her knee, Idril had screamed against the wind and the pain and the fear. She had tried to make herself rigid and strong, to hold onto them both, to keep them all together.

Elenwë had looked up into his face then, her expression equal parts fear and resolve. Another wind blasted against them, Idril screamed again, and when he could finally see through the snow, Elenwë was gone.

But that had not been the end. Turgon had managed to lift Idril back up ahead of him into Aredhel’s care and had resolved to climb down after Elenwë, to find her, to rescue her. His plan had not included waking up here alone. In fact, part of him had counted on dying alongside her.

Turgon held Idril tighter and looked at Aredhel. Her eyes started to redden and she hid her face against Idril’s hair.

They were dead.

* * *

_It was only with great effort that Turgon managed to put her out of his mind. By nightfall he had convinced himself of the unlikelihood of seeing her again in the vast city, and to their credit Fingon and Argon had not mentioned her again._

_Turgon and Argon were standing together on the balcony outside the glamorous party the sons of Fingolfin had been invited to, glasses balanced in their hands as they gazed out at the dark water. Admittedly the setting made it harder to put the image of that fair face, that laugh, that graceful hand out of his mind, but Turgon was nothing if not a creature of self-discipline._

_Later he would wonder if it was trying so very hard to ignore any thought of her that made her manifest before him._

_"Brothers, there's someone I'd like you to meet," Fingon said from behind them._

_Turgon turned around and felt as if the entire cliff face gave way beneath them, internally unbalancing him. There she was, on Fingon's arm no less, in all her beauty. She had tamed her windswept hair into a mass of golden braids and pins and traded her sailing clothes for a fine gown of indigo blue, but the joy in her eyes and the jewel on her brow were the same._

_If she was the last thing he ever saw before falling into the sea, Turgon would count himself blessed._

_"Turgon, Argon, this is Lady Elenwë. Lady Elenwë, these are my brothers."_

_Against all social graces, Turgon watched her curtsey and did not make his own hasty bow until she was rising. He could hear his heart beating in his ears, feel the heat rising in his face. It only stressed him more to notice it._

_"Your brother is a marvelous dancer," she said, smiling. She had a soft Vanyarin accent._

_Turgon knew that something must have flashed across his own face because he saw Fingon try to repress his amused reaction. In his mind he cursed Fingon's natural ease with women._

_"It is not often that one looks over her shoulder and sees three dark Noldor princes in the Eldamar harbour," she said with a knowing smile._

_Turgon did not know how much longer he could stand so near to her. Her beauty, her smile, her spirit were incandescent, brightening the world around him, everything within him so that he knew if he ever had to look away from her, everything would be diminished. It seemed his heart was close to breaking free from him, to find sanctuary with her forever._

_He was ruining any chance of winning her esteem with every strangled, silent, graceless moment he stood before her, but what could he say, what could he do? What could he offer the most perfect creation the Valar had ever made?_

_"Let me fetch you some refreshment, my lady," Fingon said._

_"Thank you," she said._

_"I'll go with you." Argon slyly knocked Turgon with his elbow as he took Turgon’s empty glass from his hands, and Turgon almost crumpled to the ground._

* * *

“Aredhel!”

Turgon opened his eyes at the loud voice and saw Aredhel leap to her feet, settle her cloak around Idril’s shoulders, and go to the door of the tent. She quickly opened it, stepped out, and sealed it shut behind her.

“Fingon! Fingon, we’re here!”

Fingon? Against his protests, he had been counted among the first group of Elves to ascend—a prince of the Noldor counted not among the leaders of his party, but among the weak. And weak he was. They had already watched a number of their comrades fade and die on the ice and Turgon had feared that Fingon, broken not just once but twice now, would be next.

That voice on the wind sounded like the Fingon Turgon had not known in a long time. Strong and commanding.

“Aredhel!”

“We’re here! Follow the sound of my voice, Fingon!”

The wind screamed, but neither Aredhel nor Fingon would be outdone. Turgon could hear Fingon’s voice growing closer and closer, and a small relief shone in his heart. Fingon had survived. And if Fingon could survive, then…

He took Idril’s hand and pressed it to his lips as she expectantly watched the door of the tent.

“ _Menel cemenyë_!” Aredhel said, no longer yelling over the wind.

The door opened and cold air and snow rushed in. Idril braced herself under the heavy cloak around her and Turgon had to shut his eyes. When he opened them, he saw Fingon standing with Elenwë unconscious in his arms, a bright smear of blood on the right side of his face. Still panting, Fingon stepped further into the tent and gently lowered Elenwë onto the fur beside Turgon. Once Elenwë was out of his care, Fingon dropped to his knees and doubled over, breathing hard.

“She’s… alive…” he managed to say as Aredhel rushed to his side.

“ _Emmë_!” Idril cried.

Turgon turned onto his bruised and broken side, groaning against the pain it woke across his body, finally letting go of Idril’s hand. He touched Elenwë’s still face and felt how cold she was. He pressed his hand against her chest and felt a shallow breath, but he could not feel relief. The sacred light that had made her so radiant had guttered out and she looked so painfully mortal.

Maybe if he asked, if he prayed, if he begged, he would be given one miracle. Maybe if he screamed the Valar would hear him, so far away. Maybe the light would find them out here in the desolation of the Helcaraxë. Maybe…

“Elenwë,” he said softly, returning his hand to the side of her face. “ _Meldonya_ , you’re safe now. You’re safe with us. Please wake up.”

As he spoke, tears flooded his voice and the corners of his eyes.

* * *

_Elenwë looked up at him once his brothers were gone and tried to ease the silence with a gracious smile. "How long is your visit here to Alqualondë?"_

_"We are here at Lord Finarfin's pleasure, visiting family and cousins," Turgon replied, his voice foreign in his own ears. "We arrived only a short time ago."_

_"Excellent," she said._

_Another silence fell and Turgon was certain she could hear the frantic flutter of his heart. He tried to inconspicuously shake some feeling back into his hands._

_"I saw you admiring my sailboat," she said, gazing out at the sea. "Perhaps I could tempt you with an adventure on the water before you are called home."_

_"That would... I would..." He could hardly breathe. "I will take you up on that invitation."_

_"Wonderful." Once again her pale blue eyes touched his face and he thought he saw something there that was more than kindness._

_"How long are you in Alqualondë, my lady?" he asked, his voice almost steady. "You are even farther from home than we are."_

_She laughed a little, two dimples gracing her fair face. "Alqualondë_ is _my home. You are correct that I was raised in Valmar, but from the first time I ever saw the sea, I knew my heart belonged here. When I wake in the morning I hear it calling my name, and all night I feel the pull of the tide in my veins."_

_"And now?" he asked softly. She grew more mesmerizing by the moment, her beauty, her kindness, her bravery._

_"Now? If I had not met your enchanting brother I would have left ages ago to dance along the beach in the silver light.”_

_Turgon had never wanted anything so much in all his life as to be allowed to be beside her on her solitary stroll._

_"Forgive me. The sea makes me wax poetic, but a poet I am not."_

_"It was lovely," he said._

_"We are returned!" Fingon announced and he and Argon swept down upon them, all of their hands full with glasses and small plates. "Help me,_ hano _."_

_Turgon took two glasses full of sparkling wine and offered one to Elenwë._

_"To the sea," he said._

_"To the sea," she replied, clinking her glass against his._

* * *

Turgon faded in and out of consciousness as he waited for Elenwë to wake up. Idril, Aredhel, and Fingon were beside him until finally he opened his eyes to find no one looking down on him. They had rolled out another fur for themselves and were sleeping tightly together, Idril snuggled safely between her aunt and uncle.

With Idril safe and comforted, Turgon moved closer to Elenwë’s still body, took one of her hands in his, and folded it against his chest.

“Elenwë, please… Please…” he prayed, nestling his forehead against hers.

She took a deeper breath and then another. “Turgon…”

He gasped and clutched her hand. With a final brush of his nose against hers, he pulled away so he could see her face. “Elenwë!”

Pain spread across her features, but she opened her eyes. “Turgon, where’s—”

“Idril’s here. She’s all right.”

Briefly the tension in Elenwë’s face relaxed.

“And Fingon?”

“Fingon brought you here. Do you remember what happened?”

She shook her head. “I remember Idril falling… and I remember…”

He had known in that moment hanging on the icefall that Elenwë was going to let go. To let her daughter be saved, she was going to let go and fall to her doom. She _had_ fallen.

Perhaps mercifully, his heartbreak had been too enormous to feel; it was the only way he had been able to pull Idril up and break out on his own to attempt to find and rescue his wife. This was where his own memory blurred. He had not even asked Aredhel what had happened or who had recovered him. He only knew that now his whole body throbbed from head to heel.

“I heard Fingon and I made myself open my eyes,” Elenwë said, her lids now heavy, her gaze unfocused. “I thought… I thought we were both…”

“Don’t think about that now,” he said, bowing his forehead to hers again. “Are you in pain?”

He felt her shake her head. “No… I can’t… I can’t feel anything.”

“You’ll warm up.” He adjusted her cloak to be tucked tight against her body.

“No, Turgon,” she said, turning her face away from his. “I can’t feel anything.”

He pulled away from her. Squeezing her hand, he waited for her to reciprocate. “We’ll summon a healer. There must be something—”

As she lay staring up at the ceiling, a tear fell from the corner of her eye straight down her temple and into her hair.

* * *

_The first morning they woke up in bed together, their first morning as husband and wife, Turgon lay staring at her while she slept. The silk blankets were wrapped around her waist, baring the fine lines of her back, her hair loose behind her. The golden light of Laurelin shining through the open window was radiant on her bare skin. Watching her breathe gently, Turgon could only shake his head at his good fortune. She had married him. The most beautiful woman in all of Elvendom, the bravest, the kindest. She had chosen him._

_And yesterday, for the first time in perhaps all his life, he had been utterly unafraid. Standing before her, handing his heart to her, he had known that they would be safe together forever._

_“Are you done staring?” she asked, her voice muffled against her arm folded under her cheek._

_“Never,” he said, wrapping his arm around her waist and sliding down beside her._

_She turned over to face him, filling the tight space with the smell of the perfume she had worn for their wedding. Turgon choked back a laugh._

_“What?” she asked_

_“We got married yesterday,” he said, grinning._

_“I remember.” She shook her head at his ridiculous behaviour._

_“So what shall it be today? Sailing? Swimming? I seem to remember promising you a life of adventure.”_

_Outside the open window, birds called out over the rhythmic swelling and fading of the sea against the shore. They had chosen to live in Elenwë’s house in Alqualondë for now, to spare them both from the pressures of their royal positions in Tirion. Elenwë was the only person who could make Turgon quite forget he was a prince at all._

_Elenwë pressed one hand against his shoulder to urge him to lie flat on his back. He acquiesced and she tucked her head on his chest, twined her legs with his. Taking a deep, full breath, she said, “Could we lie here for a while?”_

_He held her tight. “As you wish.”_

* * *

Her breathing was not improving. Turgon watched the small rise and fall of her chest, the only movement in her entire body. When he touched his hand to her face, it was plain how very pale she was. Even her lips were white.

She could not move. Those arms that had commanded her own sailboat, those legs that had carried her elegantly across every ballroom from Alqualondë to Tirion, those heavy breaths that had existed only between she and him… the Helcaraxë had taken all of it.

The longer he watched her, the more distant Turgon’s heartbeat felt. Wherever on this godforsaken ice Elenwë’s body had been broken, her life cut open and left to bleed out, that was where his heart was. Never to be recovered.

“Are you done staring?” she asked, her voice a breathy scrape in her throat.

Turgon felt the tears that had been burning in his eyes finally escape down his cheeks. He pressed his hand against her face. “Never. Never, _meldonya_.”

“Idril?” Elenwë had spent what little control she had on her waking moments and now her voice was even smaller. She struggled to open her eyes.

“She’s sleeping.”

“Tell her… tell her I love her always.”

Turgon blinked hard to clear the tears from his vision so he could gaze down at his wife.

Maybe if he begged…

“You gave me everything… more than I could—could have dreamed of…”

“I love you, Elenwë. I love you so much.” He could not beg her to stay, could not ask her to endure the anguish of a broken body for his sake. If anything, he wanted…

Maybe if he screamed…

“I… love you…” Her breaths were hardly more than stutters now. She fought against the forces pulling her eyes shut. “Tell Fingon… he promised…”

Her blue eyes finally drifted closed.

“Elenwë!” Still cupping her face, Turgon dropped his forehead to her shoulder. He could still feel her breathing.

Turgon’s cry roused Idril, Fingon, and Aredhel, and they swiftly surrounded them.

“ _Emmë_!” Idril took her mother’s hand. A gesture she could not feel.

“Elenwë… Elenwë, please… Please…” Turgon sank into the utter stillness of her chest. _Take me with you…_

Idril started to scream. Aredhel embraced her, held her as her grief broke her in half. Fingon pressed his hand against his mouth, the sorrow ever present on his face growing deeper, permanently carving those pained lines into his features.

Turgon could not feel anything. Whatever had shattered Elenwë out on the ice now completed its fate on him too. How swift was the journey back to Valinor, to the Halls of Mandos? Would she have to pass over the great expanse they had travelled so far, or would she open her eyes and find herself painlessly waking to the soothing sight of ever-eve? Had her beautiful soul tarried among them, to wait and watch and soothe as she was able?

He could not know. Could not ask, could not gently coax her to share her secrets…

They had vowed to love each other forever. Had been promised forever.

As he lay there clutching Elenwë’s body, Turgon silently waited for the forces of the world to bring them back together. To rip his aching soul from his wounded body and let him next open his eyes to see Elenwë’s face and the stars. Feel her hand on his face.

Idril wept.

* * *

_In his dream, Turgon woke in their bed in Alqualondë alone. Ice cold air blew through the open window, casting aside the curtains to fill the room with dismal half-light. All of Elenwë’s things were covered in a layer of heavy snow. He tried to get out of bed, but he could not move his limbs. He tried to scream, but could not raise his voice past his throat. Hot tears welled in his eyes and prickled with cold as they fell down his face._

_On the wind he heard a wasted voice. “Tell Fingon… he promised…”_

_He was doomed to lay here alone and trapped and only half alive. And he knew that that was not a dream._

* * *

“Turgon. Turgon.”

He blinked open his swollen eyes and felt the tears that had dried at the edges of his lashes as he slept.

“You were having a bad dream,” Fingon said, hovering over him.

Turgon glanced to his other side but there was no one laying there. Days ago someone Turgon did not even know had taken Elenwë’s body to lay with the others who had fallen. Seeing her still body had been heart-wrenching; being without the sight of her was at least as painful.

Elenwë’s folded cloak and pack sat in the corner of the tent, orphaned. Looking anywhere else but at the small collection of her belongings, Turgon discovered that he and Fingon were alone. This tent had not been this empty once in the eternity Turgon had been laying here. It felt too open, too cold.

“Where’s Idril?” Turgon asked, fear climbing, burning up throat as if he could be sick on it.

“She’s with Aredhel,” Fingon said, and it was only his quick reply that stopped Turgon’s terror from searing him in half. “The other climbers arrived. Father and Argon are here.”

Turgon could not feel relief anymore. “Are they all right?”

“They’re here,” Fingon said.

Turgon heard what he truly meant. Their father and brother had survived—what did it matter if they had been battered or bloodied? This was what the Noldor prayed for now: mere survival.

Fingon looked exhausted. The cut on his face had started to scab, still less intense than the lines of misery that hardly ever seemed to leave him. Turgon knew that his own expression must have looked at least as tortured.

They were brothers, after all. Same face. Same broken heart.

It did not occur to Turgon that he had wanted to be alone with Fingon until this moment, when he felt something urgent stir in the hole in his chest.

“Help me up,” Turgon whispered, his voice spent, as if he had indeed forced his dream self to scream and scream even if it was for nothing.

Fingon took his right arm and helped him slowly sit up. As soon as Turgon was upright he collapsed forward into Fingon’s shoulder to weep. The first time he had properly cried since he watched the final breath leave Elenwë’s body. The first time he could allow himself to, without Idril here to see him. He had watched the pitch black swallow the blue of his daughter’s eyes; still it held her, and he could not let himself be an addition to her already immense pain. So he had locked his grief deep inside him, and now that it was free he could not stop it.  

“ _Hano_ ,” Fingon whispered as he wrapped his arms tight around him. “I’m so sorry.”

Once the violent convulsions of sobs had finally worked through him and Turgon had the barest control over himself again he tried to speak. In the safe, dark cave between his and Fingon’s embrace, he wanted to speak. “She said your name. One of the very last things she said. She said you made her a promise.”

He could not see Fingon’s face, but he had watched Fingon’s new, pained expressions enough these past years to guess that a deep line would appear between his eyebrows and he would close his eyes as if the words physically hurt him. His strong, gallant brother, utterly destroyed by his heartbreak. Turgon held out no hope for himself.

“I did.” Fingon pulled away from him and showed Turgon the very expression he had imagined, but with tears streaming down his face. Turgon was certain he knew the promise his brother had made.

Gracelessly, Turgon lifted his right hand to Fingon’s face to brush away his tears. In turn Fingon cupped Turgon’s face in both his hands and wiped his tears away with his thumbs.

“How did you do this?” Turgon asked, having to put the weight of his head in Fingon’s hands as it became too much for him to bear. His left temple was throbbing, stars spreading sporadically across his vision with each pulse.

“With you,” Fingon said. “Turgon, I know it hurts now. I know. But for Idril’s sake… for my sake… please…”

“She wanted to see the sea,” Turgon said, the thought hardly passing through his mind before he said it out loud. He was a creature of only great pain and feeling now. It was strange. “I will see it for her.”

“Turgon…” He watched Fingon wrestle with his words, but he never said them.

Turgon was too weak to stop the fresh flood of tears. These were more quickly spent than the first swell. “Do I have to tell them?”

“Aredhel said she would tell them,” Fingon assured him.

“I should stand.”

“You’re injured.”

Turgon glanced up Fingon’s body. He could be hurt too. He had risked more than anyone had, not only climbing down to find Elenwë but also bearing her broken body back to them. Aside from his broken arm bound tight to him, Turgon did not appear injured, but he knew he was, felt every bruise. Fingon could be the same, and Turgon did not want to risk asking him to help him stand.

So their father would have to find them where they sat. Broken, cut, bruised, and heartsick.

He had been awake for too long already. Turgon's mind, unable to touch the black and shapeless anguish of his broken heart, fixated on the myriad pains in his body. He intentionally flexed the fingers of his broken arm to feel the sharp recoil and lingering stiffness there. He leaned into the bruise that covered his left side from below his ribs to above his knee, pressing until he thought the throbbing might seep into his very bones. His physical pain was the only thing that made sense anymore.

“Turgon!” Argon swept open the door to the tent, still bundled up in all his furs from the climb, snow and ice still sticking to him. He dropped to his knees and pulled Turgon into a tight embrace.

Something terrible could have happened to Argon, could still happen to him. And it was only that fear that gave Turgon the strength to lift his arm and hold tight to him. All of them were mortal now. Abandoned.

Looking past Argon’s shoulder, Turgon saw his father standing in the doorway. Idril held tight to him, and he had one arm and his cloak wrapped around her like protective wing. The longer Turgon stared, the more his father unraveled before him, frowning against his grief for his sworn daughter, his son, his granddaughter, finally closing his eyes against the tears that had begun to shimmer there.

His daughter, his father, his sister, his brothers all here around him, but Turgon could only feel Elenwë’s absence. It was a chasm in his chest where his heart used to be, growing deeper and deeper until one day, he assumed, it would swallow him. Then he would hold Elenwë’s hand again, hear her voice, hold her under the light of the stars.

This sense of mortality tingling painfully through him was a gift then. A promise that he would not have to wait long. Just long enough to behold the great expanse of the sea from a new shore. He would see her there, her radiant spirit upon the water, laughing as she had the first time he had ever laid eyes on her, and then he would finally break open and be free to join her.


	4. Chapter 4

Fingon tried to sit still. He wondered if Maedhros could see how badly he trembled; if he could, he did not say anything. Instead the studio was utterly silent save for the brushing of Maedhros’ charcoal as he sketched his study.

He had not imagined it would be this painful, being alone with Maedhros. He thought he had quite mastered himself and his feelings, trained by these past months of watching Maedhros flirt and dance with all the women in Tirion. Watching him drink and hunt and swim and walk… Fingon had watched Maedhros for a long time and done nothing. Realizing that he was in love with him was quite the worst revelation Fingon had ever had. It had forced him to put Maedhros at a distance when they had once been such good friends, depriving him of the closeness that they had had drinking together, hunting together, swimming together, being together. He could not be near Maedhros without feeling himself edge nearer to the brink of telling him. And he could not tell him.

The truth would make everything so complicated, for both of them, for their families. Maedhros did not do complicated. Why should he, when his princely gifts had allowed him a life of leisure and ease?

If this request had not come from his own father, Fingon would have figured a way out of this, being alone with Maedhros in his studio. But to celebrate his eldest son’s birthday, Fingolfin had requested a bust to be sculpted by one of the most talented artists in Tirion: Maedhros. It had all been arranged by the time his father had told him, so Fingon could only say _Yes, of course, Father._

So he sat there, feeling Maedhros’ eyes move over him, so close to something he wanted so very badly. Trying not to tremble and failing, trying not to let everything he wanted to say spill out of him and barely succeeding. The longer he sat there, the more he felt as if he might cry, and the anger he felt with himself for his lack of discipline only pushed his tears closer to the surface.

“Look at me,” Maedhros said.

Fingon forced himself to take three deep breaths and finally raised his gaze, staring just over Maedhros’ left shoulder.

“Relax,” Maedhros said.

Brush, brush, brush, the strokes of the charcoal.

Fingon did not move. He barely even breathed.

“Fingon, relax,” Maedhros said again, gently teasing. “The idea is that I capture your likeness in stone, not for you to pose as a stone now.”

“Sorry.” Fingon dropped his gaze, his sight blurring with tears.

“Here, let me place you.” Maedhros stood up and came to where Fingon perched on a stool by the window. This close, he seemed to fill everything around Fingon. All he could see, all he could hear, all he could sense was Maedhros. He smelled like the orange blossoms in the orchards and warm charcoal. The hands that landed on Fingon’s shoulders were warm and sure.

Maedhros angled his upper body towards the window to his right. Fingon held his breath as Maedhros gently pressed his shoulders away from his ears, spread his fingers on either side of Fingon’s neck to lengthen it. As he lifted Fingon’s chin up, Maedhros bent forward so they were face to face. With the critical eye of an artist, Maedhros studied him and finally, with his thumbs against Fingon’s jaw, tilted his head just so. Having done all that, Maedhros still lingered, staring. So very close.

“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are, Fingon?” Maedhros’ voice was soft and weighted deep in his chest. A tone Fingon had too often imagined but never heard before.

It startled him so that he accidentally met Maedhros’ bronze gaze, liquid and burning. Maedhros’ hands were still on his face.

Just a small movement and Maedhros closed the space between them to kiss him. A firm, steady pressure that made Fingon melt and lean in. Fingon parted his lips and Maedhros followed his lead, and they came together again for one exquisite moment before Fingon pressed both his hands against Maedhros’ chest and forced them apart.

“You don’t want this?” Maedhros asked breathily. His hands still cupped Fingon’s face.

“It’s all I want, Maedhros.” Fingon’s heart beat unbridled in his chest, free for the first time in a long time, making his voice shake. “Not just once in secret in your studio.”

Something of fear moved behind Maedhros’ eyes—the very thing Fingon had been trying to avoid with his vow of silence—but then he smiled. He kissed Fingon in earnest now, clutching his face, practically pulling him to his feet. Seizing the front of Maedhros’ shirt, Fingon came to stand, reaching for Maedhros’ mouth.

Could it truly have been this easy all along? The few parts of Fingon that were not lost to euphoria were heavy with shock. That Maedhros was not the blithe creature Fingon had thought he was. That Maedhros wanted this, wanted him, truly, and what this meant and—

Maedhros moved to the side of Fingon’s neck to kiss, to lick, and Fingon lost his train of thought.

Only half aware that he was doing it at all, Fingon reached into Maedhros’ hair and drew out the fork that held his copper waves away from his face. As Maedhros’ hair tumbled free from its knot, Fingon caught his hand in it, combing his fingers down until he found the back of Maedhros’ neck. He accidentally pinched as Maedhros gently bit the tender flesh of his throat. As Fingon gasped, Maedhros laughed against him.

“We should keep going,” Maedhros said, his breath pouring over Fingon’s skin.

“I agree.” Fingon caught his mouth again, holding Maedhros close with the hand on the back of his neck. His other hand had strayed down to Maedhros’ hip and now he had almost emboldened himself enough to let it travel lower when Maedhros pulled away.

“I mean the session,” he said. “Or your father will have questions that I’m not prepared to answer.”

Fingon was not certain he could stand as Maedhros drew away from him. He caught himself and looked up into Maedhros’ face. He looked as relaxed as ever, but his cheeks and the tips of his ears were pink and there was a gentle smile on his lips that Fingon had not seen before.

“Here.” Maedhros drew a cloth he wore tucked in his belt and rubbed it against Fingon’s face. “I got charcoal on you.”

Fingon laughed a little. His heart was still so wild in his chest he could not speak. He sat back down as Maedhros returned to his easel, trying to place himself as Maedhros had, angled towards the golden light shining through the window.

They stared at each other for a long moment. The distance between them, just minutes ago too close for Fingon to bear, suddenly felt very great indeed.

Maedhros smiled again, that winsome look that Fingon had so often seen before, for others. Now it was for him. “Stay still. The sooner I finish…”

They completed that thought the moment Maedhros put his charcoal down on the edge of his easel.

* * *

“Turgon!” Fingon called down the steps.

Turgon stopped on the stairs leading down from the gardens and turned around.

“You’re leaving your own party?” Fingon’s tone was more surprised—almost impressed—than condemning.

Turgon nodded. “Will you make my excuses to Lord Finarfin?”

“I suppose,” Fingon said with a dramatic sigh, turning back towards the house. “Give my regards to your lady water nymph.”

If Turgon had not been nearly floating with excitement, he might have been annoyed. Without a second thought of Fingon or their uncle or the impropriety of his exit, Turgon hurried down to the harbour where he and Elenwë had agreed to meet.

She was a pale column of light in the silver glow of Telperion, standing there on the dock. She wore a white shirt, jerkin, and leggings—the same combination he wore, though she looked more at ease that Turgon had ever felt in his life. Her golden hair was braided down her back.

“Did anyone say anything?” she asked as he approached her.

“Only Fingon.”

She smiled and shook her head, and Turgon laughed at the impression she had already gathered of his brother. He boarded the sailboat easily now and took his customary spot on the far side of tiller, next to where she would command her vessel.

Under her masterful sailing they were soon anchored in a secluded spot at the tip of the Bay of Eldamar, the sounds and lights of the city far away. It was only them, the sea, and the starry sky.

Elenwë led him to the bow of the boat and waved her lantern over the basket of food she had brought. “I thought I owed you something, since you left your own farewell party to meet me here,” she said, setting her lantern on the boards and taking a seat. “May I pour you a drink?”

“Please,” Turgon said, sitting not too close beside her. “Thank you, for all of this these past few weeks. I have enjoyed our adventures.”

“It was my pleasure. One cannot truly appreciate Alqualondë without taking to the sea.” She handed him a silver tumbler and clinked her own against it. “To happy meetings.”

Turgon was happy indeed to drink to that.

They picked up the lively discussion they had been having when last they had parted, laughing and teasing. Turgon said more in ten minutes with Elenwë than he had in hours surrounded by people at the party. He tried not to anticipate the moment when the night would turn toward its ending, when he would have to say goodbye. Elenwë did not allow a moment’s lapse in conversation, plying him with food and drink until her basket was empty.

“The shooting stars should be visible soon,” Turgon said, making her glance up at the sky and allowing the light from the lantern to illuminate her profile. Her long, elegant neck was pale in the light, so beautiful and perfect for a woman who had made her home in the swan haven.

He helped her clear away the basket and glasses and pull out a blanket so they could lay back and watch the stars.

For the first time, the night was totally silent. Turgon could not quite call his attention skyward, not when he could sense Elenwë’s hand so close to his.

“In Valmar my father would make these little cakes covered in so much sugar they would sparkle, just for the night of the shooting stars. We would go to this clearing in the forest and watch this single, perfect circle of sky framed by the shadows of the trees.”

Turgon had turned his head to watch her speak. There was always such a dance of emotions across her face when she spoke, no matter what she was talking about. It made him want to free all the feelings he usually kept tightly reined in, and these past few weeks he had, a little, just with her.

“When I came to Alqualondë the first time and I looked out at the sea, at the stars filling the sky forever in all directions and even reflecting in the water I—”

Turgon took her hand. Neither of them was looking at the sky now. They turned towards each other on the tiny island of their blanket on the vast dark sea. The air between them grew warmer, their breathing heavy and soon in tandem. Before tonight Turgon could hardly feel three emotions at a time without being overwhelmed. But now, here, his whole body singing from head to heel with every feeling known to him, he had perfect clarity.

Lunging forward, gripping her hand, Turgon kissed her. It was harder than he had intended, but she met his eagerness, laying her other hand against his face, opening her mouth over his lower lip.

“Elenwë—”

She let go of his hand and moved to wrap her arm underneath him. Obeying her lead, he eased himself over her, bracing one arm beside her face, brushing his fingers through her hair. He took this opportunity of their brief parting to gaze down at her. She was so beautiful, so strong, so brave. He could feel her heavy breaths against his chest, their hearts colliding.

“Are you done staring?” she asked, a small smile playing on her lips.

 _Never_ , he wanted to say. He laughed, releasing some of the nervous tension from his body. Bowing his head, he kissed her again.

Above them, the bright tails of shooting stars lit the sky.

* * *

Still vigilant after the eternity they had spent in this accursed place, too exhausted to feel tired any longer, Aredhel walked the exterior of the circle of tents, scanning the horizon in all directions for some sign of disaster. Once there had been enough warriors to surround the outside of the camp, but no longer. Many were dead. Some had lost their strength to heartbreak and huddled now in what little warmth they could find.

Aredhel was not sure that she should count herself lucky to still possess the stamina to walk out in the screaming wind, but she knew that she could not sit in a tent looking at the hopelessness in her brothers’ faces, the ruin of her sweet niece. The cold blowing against her was more bearable than that.

A single figure stood still and some distance from the camp, face turned skyward. Aredhel had barely registered that it was Glorfindel before she started sprinting towards him. What had he seen? What was coming for them?

“What is it?” she asked as she slid to a halt beside him. After she had stopped her heart continued to hammer in her chest, her mind racing with thoughts of catastrophe.

Glorfindel pointed one gloved hand almost straight above them. “Look.”

Craning her head back, Aredhel saw a break in the clouds revealing the indigo sky and a single shining star.

“ _Vardahantalë_ ,” she gasped.

The light reaching down towards them cleared the haze of snow blindness from her eyes, shone in her heart and rushed through her limbs, wakening the undying grace inside her. _Life._

Aredhel took one more breath as she gazed up at the star and then looked away. She could not bear to see the clouds and shadows of the Helcaraxë consume it.

The fullness of her heart in her chest was almost too much, her body too weakened to contain in. It took a few moments, but she finally stood up straight again and saw Glorfindel still facing the sky, his eyes closed. Her body was so attuned and alive she could feel him breathing beside her as if they were her own breaths.

She had always thought Glorfindel handsome—no one could deny that. And in the wake of losing Elenwë, she had seen him step in as a thoughtful and caring friend for her brother beyond her expectations. She had often found herself watching him sit so still and quiet with Turgon, trying to reconcile this man with the athletic hunter and warrior she had—perhaps barely—known in Valinor.

Standing alone with him now, she saw and felt something entirely different as he bared his relief, his reverence, his own reawakening there beside her. When he finally looked back at her, his green eyes were luminous with Varda’s light inside him.

Neither of them spoke. This thing they held between them was so delicate, so sacred. It seemed the whole world was silent for them.

All in an instant, Aredhel caught his face in her hands, he bound his arms around her, and they came together in a fierce kiss. She opened her mouth, stood on her toes, pressed herself harder against him, anything to feel more and more after being numb for so long. She wanted to consume him; wanted the light inside him to consume her too, to feel both—

“Aredhel!”

As Argon’s voice shattered the moment, they pushed away from each other, still holding one hand, still breathing hard together. The warm glow that had surrounded them flickered but did not disappear. Glorfindel nodded and Aredhel took her leave of him, the great shimmering she still felt in her body making her tremble.

She found Argon and followed him to the row of their family’s tents. Inside, Idril sat on the floor, her knees pulled up, hiding her face as she wept loudly. Fingolfin sat beside her, just one hand on her back. If Turgon and Fingon were not here, that meant that Turgon was spiralling down again. Aredhel had been on that watch before with both of her older brothers, trying to hold them together as they fell apart.

“She’s here, _yenya_ ,” her father whispered to Idril. He looked up at Aredhel. “She asked for you.”

“Come here, _ammalë_.” Aredhel swept down beside her niece, coaxing her to unravel from the knot of grief she had curled her body into and lean on her shoulder. Wrapping one arm over Idril’s back, one arm across so she could stroke her cheek, her ear, her hair, Aredhel assumed her position as one of the last pillars of strength in the House of Fingolfin. Looking at her father and younger brother, pale and exhausted, Aredhel felt the warm, vital starlight glowing just beneath the surface of her skin.

Once Idril was soothed enough to rest, Aredhel stepped back outside, intent on finding Glorfindel. She had hardly walked twelve paces when a hand grabbed hers and pulled her into between two tents, out of the wind.

Glorfindel laid one hand against her face and she felt a halo there. He kissed her softly, cleansing her of the darkness and grief that clung to her. Aredhel clutched the front of his cloak in both her hands and pressed her mouth to his until everything around and within her was bright with his golden light.

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

_First Age 1_

There was so much noise. Morgoth’s foul creatures as they stampeded over the horizon by the thousands, the Noldor as they tried to organize their defenses, the terrible, eldritch echo that filled the valley. It made it almost impossible to think; there was no time for anything but action.

Feeling his hands shake as he held his bow, Fingon cast a glance at Aredhel beside him. She was fierce to behold, her grey eyes hard, her countenance set as if in stone. Nothing in her softened when she looked at him, but she gave him a nod. Fingon tried to hold some of her determination as he turned to look behind him, where his father and Argon organized the melee forces and armed themselves. Farther back, Turgon had been given command of the final line of defense, protecting the most vulnerable—those too young or too weak to fight.

“Archers!” Aredhel shouted over the din. Hundreds fell in line beside them, bows at the ready, armed with swords as well for the inevitable moment when they exhausted their small supply of arrows.

At his sister’s command, Fingon knocked an arrow, drew, and waited. Morgoth’s terrible forces drew closer, a great shadow of misshapen creatures brandishing dark blades. The archers could only watch the shadow gain ground until the enemy forces were in range, trying to breathe and steady themselves as the ground shook beneath their feet.

Briefly Fingon thought of the scores of Noldor graves they had left behind them, the treasures they had left for the dead. Turgon had carved a boat on Elenwë’s grave marker and Idril had tied a pressed flower to it, taken from a book of poetry Elenwë had carried with her, an emblem of Valinor to leave with her. If Morgoth’s creatures destroyed them all here, now, then those graves would be next in their path. The thought clutched him with the same devastation he had felt watching Elenwë fade.

_Promise me, Fingon… Promise you will watch over them…_

“Loose!”

Fingon let his first arrow fly and swiftly knocked the second. More and more of the creatures fell with every wave, but the others merely crushed them into the ground as they charged forward.

Behind the archers, the other Noldor forces shouted their readiness. Everything was so loud.

Fingon had thought the Helcaraxë had been their trial of infernal torment. It was cruelty beyond his understanding that they should now have to face this force of evil.

When he had spent his arrows, Fingon shouldered his bow and drew his sword. Together with his sister, his brother, and his father, he held the front line as Morgoth’s creatures finally crashed down on them.

* * *

Turgon’s mind was silent as he watched the battle, searching for the flash of Noldor blades in the pandemonium, listening for any shouts of Quenya that might suggest the state of their defense. There was only screaming—any of them could be his family, his friends. He sensed the shadow hovering in his mind—what it would mean to lose any of them now, when he had just buried Elenwë—but he did not let himself touch it.

It was a paltry force that held the line with him. A sorry state indeed if he was the one deemed fit to lead. But as Turgon glanced to his left and right, he saw a resolve in the faces of those men and women that he had not seen since they had left the shores of Aman. Pain transformed in the forge of battle to something stronger.

After he had kissed her forehead, Turgon had put a long knife in Idril’s hand. When she had looked up at him that final time the ever-present tears in her eyes had disappeared. Putting a blade in his daughter’s hand could not be his last act as her father. He refused.

And so he watched the fighting. Watched the gleam of Noldor steel be slowly swallowed by the dark.

* * *

As Argon burst through the tide of creatures, Fingon tried to follow him. It had been almost impossible to hold the line against the full brunt of Morgoth’s forces, and so far they had only been beaten back. Seeing Argon charge forward reignited Fingon’s guttering strength and he fought and fought to keep up. He heard other Elves following him, creating a wedge in the enemy line, slowly splitting them apart as more and more Noldor joined the formation.

Argon was so swift, so deadly, that Fingon was constantly left far behind him, but he fought on. Through the din, a single commanding voice emerged, a gravelly shout in a harsh tongue. Fingon followed it, pushing, slashing. For every creature he felled, it seemed two others took its place, but Fingon would not let them overtake him, not when he was Argon’s only defense.

Suddenly the commanding voice was silenced. The creatures pressing down on Fingon stopped their assault and turned around, and finally Fingon could see more than an arm’s length away.

Their captain, a great hulking thing, collapsed and behind it stood Argon, sword aloft and dark with blood, green eyes aflame. He screamed a battle cry and the transfixion that had held the creatures’ attention shattered. The one that had been fighting Fingon and all those around them now turned on Argon.

It was no longer a fight, but a race as Fingon followed them, trying to reach Argon first. Behind him there was a great swell of Noldor voices as the small wedge at the front line had become a great offensive force now slicing up through the whole of the dark army.

Fingon could feel nothing of that victory, not when he was failing in his rush to his brother’s side. As the Noldor caught up to him, the creatures parted and Fingon could sprint forward with all the forward momentum that had been denied to him, an arrow finally shot at its target.

As he came upon the rocks that had given the captain its vantage point over the battle, Argon was nowhere to be seen. Along the back of the rocks, Argon’s sword lay in the dirt and with every step Fingon took toward it, he felt the strength bleeding out of him.

Argon lay behind the rocks, a blade buried hilt-deep in his chest. As he violently twitched for breath, Fingon felt the last of his will carry him to his brother’s side. Kneeling, Fingon cradled Argon’s head. He laid his other hand on Argon’s chest, above the blade, feeling how hard Argon still fought to breathe, to hold onto his final moments.

“I’m here, _hano_.” Fingon held his brother’s gaze, and it calmed the wildness in Argon’s green eyes. Their mother’s eyes.

“You did it,” Fingon said softly. “You did everything, Argon. The Noldor are fighting back.”

He remembered holding Argon this gently when he was a baby. His little brother.

Argon exhaled and a stream of blood trickled out of his mouth. He flinched in pain.

“I know it hurts. It’s all right,” Fingon said, taking strength from his very soul to speak. “It’s all right. I’ll stay here with them, I promise. You can go. You can go home, _hano_.”

The tension in Argon’s body eased. He stared up into Fingon’s face for a one calm moment, and as he closed his eyes, a single tear fell down his face.

Fingon wanted to scream. His heart was being ripped from his chest and he wanted to scream. But he did not want Argon’s soul to hear that as it was freed from his body. He had said it was all right, that he would be strong. He could not let his last words to his baby brother be a lie.

 

“Fingon! Argon! _Hanor_!”

The sound of Aredhel’s voice broke the silence that had filled Fingon’s body and heart. It was as if he were waking up, weighed deep below the surface of reality by his grief. Once he was conscious enough to hear Aredhel’s voice, he heard the other Noldor voices calling around him. Only Noldor voices. They had won.

Argon had won it for them.

“Fingon!”

She was close now. Fingon could not call back to her. He could not move from where he sat in the dirt, holding Argon’s body.

“ _Hano_ —” Aredhel came around the rocks, her focus on Argon’s discarded sword. When she saw her brothers, she froze.

As Fingon met her gaze, he could not keep his tears at bay any longer. She clasped both her stained hands over her mouth, shaking her head, retreating a step.

She finally moved her hands down to her abdomen, trying to take a breath, and choked out one word. “No…”

Fingon silently watched her suffer. There was nothing he could do. Aredhel was almost doubled over with the pain that seized her, when suddenly she rallied herself, stood up, and quickly walked away.

“Father,” Fingon heard her say. “Father, wait. Please.”

Fingon had thought that his whole being was consumed by sorrow, but there was just enough space left for fear. Fear for his father and what was about to happen.

Fingolfin came around the corner and saw his sons. Fingon could not look at him, but he heard his father’s heavy footsteps approach them, felt him drop to the ground next to where he knelt.

Fingolfin wrenched the blade from Argon’s chest, making his body arch strangely. He bound his arms around his dead child and lifted his lifeless body against him. After several empty gasps for air, Fingolfin screamed. The scream became a roar, a promise of violence and vengeance. And the roar became a low, animal moan deep inside him, his soul tearing apart.

Fingon closed his eyes and more tears fell down his face.

* * *

“Aredhel! Aredhel, thank—”

She looked up at Glorfindel and watched the relief in his expression collapse. His handsome face—his whole body—was streaked with dirt and black blood. She knew then how terrible she must have looked because his near-relief had turned to horror now, his emerald eyes wide, his mouth fallen open. She could feel the hot streaks of tears on her face, the scratching of loose strands of her hair where they stuck to her cheeks, her neck.

Still standing guard to let her father feel his pain in solitude, Aredhel stepped forward so Glorfindel would not come closer.

“What happened?” he asked, haphazardly reassembling his stoic warrior mask.

She was only one step away from him now, so he would be able to hear her decimated voice. So she would be able to feel some of his strength. “Argon is dead.”

Glorfindel frowned. As if he could read her thoughts, he embraced her. As soon as she had seen him she had wanted him to hold her, but the moment he pressed his arm against her shoulder she flinched and retreated from him.

“You’re hurt.” His mask fell completely as he leaned around her to look at her back. He had immediately taken his hands off her, but now he gently pressed his palm against hers, the gesture hidden between them. Lingering close, he said softly, “You’re bleeding.”

She seized his hand. “My father can’t see me like this. Please. Not now.”

Glorfindel guided her away. Blinded by tears, crumbling under the ever-growing weight of her grief, pain radiating in her left shoulder, she did not care who saw them hand-in-hand. Wherever he took her, it was quiet now and he bid her to sit down on a rock.

“May I?” he asked.

The heavy tunic she wore laced up the back and once she nodded, she felt him begin to gently pull out the stays. Something about the quiet—something about being alone with him in the quiet—made her feel safe enough to unleash the full force of her sorrow.

Her brother was dead. They had come all this way, through enough danger and heartbreak, all for her to immediately lose her younger brother on these shores. Argon dead. The entire House of Fingolfin now fractured by heartbreak. How could they go on…

How would her father go on?

After hearing the agony inside him, a sound that she wished she could forget, Aredhel was not certain he would ever stand tall again. They would have to leave him clutching his child’s body for all eternity. Or they would all stay, the noble House of Fingolfin kneeling in the dirt and adding to the terrible echo in this valley with their own screams.

“Oh, Aredhel,” Glorfindel sighed as he slid the back of her slashed tunic over her shoulder. He did not make her speak, just moved around her to collect whatever he needed. “This might hurt.”

As the damp cloth touched her shoulder and water dripped over her wound, Aredhel felt just how wide and how deep it was.

“Ow!” she sobbed, her grief amplifying her voice. She heard how pathetic she sounded and hated it. Hated the world for doing this to her. Hated the creature who had put a sword through her brother’s chest. Hated them all.

Glorfindel silently cleaned her wound, sometimes pausing if she cried out hard enough, but not stopping until it was done.

“This will need stitches,” he finally said, his voice hoarse as if her crying had exhausted him too.

“Can you just bandage it for now?” She sniffled and wiped the tears from her face as more fell. “Please?”

“I don’t have anything,” he said. “It stopped bleeding. Be careful and it might be all right until you can see a healer.”

She felt Glorfindel put his hands on the open edges of her tunic, but before he pulled them shut, he pressed a kiss against her wounded shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Aredhel.”

She turned around and kissed him, tasting both of their tears. He slipped one hand around the back of her neck. He was tender—she was not. Clutching the front of his shirt, pulling at his collar, Aredhel would not let him part from her. She thrust her tongue against his, caught his lower lip between her teeth, kissed him so hard it hurt her too, crying all the while.

As she slid off the rock where she sat, lowering herself to straddle his waist, he moved his hands to the bare skin of her lower back. She held his face now, feeling his jaw working under her palms. He burned as badly as she did.

 _Later_ , they had said, through kisses and longing stares. On the Helcaraxë where even taking off their gloves was perilous. On the shore where they had just buried their loved ones. All that had come from waiting was more danger and more death. She wanted so badly to touch him, to feel how alive he was, how alive they both were. For him to touch her, to stir her to life— _real life_ —where his hands stroked her bare skin.

Still kissing him, Aredhel pushed the edges of her tunic over her shoulders, starting to ease it off.

“Aredhel.” He pulled away from her, taking his hands off her back, but she grabbed them and held them to her chest, to her frantic heartbeat.

She pressed his forehead to his. “Please. Please…”

“Not like this.” She felt him shake his head. Somehow it was now his hands that held hers. “You’re hurt. You’re in pain.”

“We could be dead tomorrow,” she wept. “We could be dead an hour from now. Please!”

Half rejected, half relieved, Aredhel finally fully collapsed, sobbing and gasping.

Argon was dead.

She felt Glorfindel close his arms around her, taking all her weight. He whispered softly in her ear, words she could barely hear over the noise inside her. Stroking her back, rocking her, he gave her something she did not ask for but needed desperately.

Someone to hold not only the weight of her weak and wounded body, but her heart and all the ways it had already been broken.

* * *

As soon as it was clear that the battle had been won, Turgon sheathed his sword and sprinted back to where Idril and the others had been left to await their fate. Fear still coursed through his body and carried him swiftly, not yet transformed into relief.

When he saw her—her haunted blue eyes, the knife in her hand—the fear drained out of him so completely that he dropped to his knees. Weeping, Idril ran to him and they clutched each other in a tight embrace.

“ _Atto_!” she cried into his shoulder.

Cradling her head, Turgon let his own tears fall. “It’s all right, _hinya_. It’s over now.”

When she had calmed a little, Turgon lifted her face in both his hands and kissed her brow.

Leaning heavily on each other, Turgon and Idril slowly made their way back to the final line of defense where Turgon had stood watching, worrying, for so long. On either side of them other Noldor gathered to wait for their loved ones to emerge from the battlefield.

As warriors began to appear through the haze of dust, the line of waiting spouses, children, parents, siblings, and friends began to break. They ran to their returning loved ones, some battered but well, some injured and leaning on compatriots to walk.

“Bring the wounded here!” a healer’s voice called from behind the line. It soon became clear how near a thing the Noldor victory had been as more and more bleeding, limping, barely conscious Elves returned.

Turgon tried to convince himself that his father, Fingon, Aredhel, and Argon would be the last to leave the field, to aid those who needed it, to console those who had experienced terrible loss, to honour those who had sacrificed themselves. But he could not, not when his hands still felt the ache of Elenwë’s burial. No one was safe. Not one of them would ever truly be safe again.

The tension began to rise among those who still stood watching the horizon, waiting.

The groups of those returning began to thin. Idril choked on a sob and Turgon felt it shudder through his body and upset everything he was trying to keep still and quiet inside himself.

If they were all dead…

Turgon stepped in front of Idril to break her concentration on the horizon and faced her, laying his hands on her shoulders. “I’m going to go see if anyone needs help. You can stay—”

Idril clapped her hands over his and looked up at him with grim determination in her face. Turgon nodded and, still holding her hand, led his daughter towards the battlefield.

They passed the last of the returning Elves and now all that lay before them were the distant heaps of bodies and the smell of blood and death. As they came closer, a single walking figure emerged from the gloom, coming towards them like a bizarre reflection. When Turgon saw who it was, he finally exhaled.

“Fingon.” He started to cry, long ago spent of the strength to rein them back.

Idril dropped his hand and ran across the field of bodies towards him. She embraced him with such force she knocked him back. He held her tight, stroking her hair and kissing her head until Turgon reached them.

The dirt and dark splatters of blood on Fingon’s face were streaked with tears, his blue eyes too bright and shimmering. Every feature on his face was transformed by pain in a way that Turgon had never seen before. Turgon knew he was not ready.

“Argon.” Fingon mouthed their brother’s name over Idril’s head and more tears fled down his face.

Turgon pressed his fist to his mouth, against the scream building inside him. He searched the field around them, but saw no sign of the rest of their family. When he looked back at Fingon, he felt his grief begin to reach through the shock, to take hold of him and begin to crack him in half. Fingon nodded his head toward an outcropping of rocks in the distance.

Leaving Fingon and Idril to comfort each other, Turgon carried on, blind with tears, tripping over bodies, flinching when he did. They were dead. _Argon was dead._

With every step Turgon felt like he was being pulled closer to the ground. By the time he reached the rocks, he felt as though he were dragging the whole distance they had already travelled behind him, the weight of a continent around his waist, a sea crashing against his back, Elenwë’s lifeless body in his arms, an endless freezing wind blowing through his soul.

Aredhel and Glorfindel stood at the rocks. As Turgon neared them, Glorfindel deeply bowed his head and Aredhel met his gaze. She looked as terrible as Fingon did, but more frantic somehow, her grey eyes huge, her mouth open as if she were waiting for words or a curse or a scream to make its way out of her. Turgon embraced her, pressing their foreheads together. He could feel the tension trembling in her arms, her back.

No one spoke. No one would speak again for a long time.

Eventually Aredhel parted from him and led him behind the rocks. To see their father kneeling in the dirt. To see Argon’s lifeless body pressed against his chest, a cascade of raven black hair and a limp arm touching the ground.

Turgon could not stop the sob that finally broke the silence, seeing not the warrior incarnation of his brother but the child, the little boy with unbound hair and a wooden horse in his hand that Turgon had carved for him.

Dead.

A first sign of life moved across Fingolfin’s shoulders. Slowly, he slid one arm under Argon’s legs and stood, pressing up against an agony Turgon could not bear to imagine, carrying a weight Turgon knew too well. His chest was stained with his child’s blood.

Fingolfin did not look at either Turgon or Aredhel as he passed them carrying Argon's body, but they followed him. As they walked, the collected Fingon and Idril. On their silent march, the House of Fingolfin passed through the Noldor host, inspiring a hush through their numbers.

They did not stop until they reached the sea, dark and grey beneath the cloudy sky. Fingolfin waded waist-deep into the water that separated them from Arda, letting the waves wash over Argon's bloody chest, through his dark hair, and none of his children saw the tears that poured from his heart into the sea.


	6. Chapter 6

_First Age 1_

Turgon, Fingon, and Aredhel sat around a small fire on the rocky beach. The lake was bright under the light of the Moon, as still as glass. All the world seemed to be quiet and soft, but it was not enough to comfort them.

Glancing back at the blue tent standing in the field behind them, Turgon felt the weight of grief return to his features—lines heavy around his mouth, his eyes, his brow. He had not seen his own face since the day they had left Tirion. That man had had something of worry in his face, certainly, but nothing like what Turgon felt now. If he could see himself he was sure he would not recognize the man staring back at him. He had seen such a great change in Aredhel and Fingon too; for Aredhel, a hardening of herself that would take many days in the new Sun to thaw and for Fingon, already destroyed twice over by heartbreak, a return of physical strength, of will, but nothing of happiness.

In the work of an instant, Fingolfin had been transformed into a creature none of his children recognized. His broken heart had shattered his noble comportment, stained his blue eyes with darkness, stolen all his strength and left him trembling. It had taken all but the barest whisper of his deep voice. Sometimes he was lucid enough to share a moment of tenderness with Idril, and for a moment they had all seen the terrible rage burning inside him when he had spoken to the Fëanorians. But ever since they had all seen him cradling Argon’s body, Fingolfin had mostly been a creature of silence and solitude. Since the day they had made their camp here on the shores of the lake, Fingolfin had not come out of his tent.

Turgon could not fathom how his father had even risen from his knees that awful day at Lammoth. In the few and distant moments Turgon could even bring himself to think about how great his father’s grief must be, trying not to even touch thoughts of how he would feel if he lost Idril, Turgon knew that a loss as immense as that would kill him.

For days Fingolfin had stayed in his battle clothes, a dark stain of his son’s blood on his chest as if he carried an open wound.

Turgon knew he did.

* * *

Aredhel sat with her arms tightly folded across her chest, a habit from the Helcaraxë she could not break even on a night as fair as this.

They used to sit around the fire together like this in Tirion, the four of them. Then the five of them after Turgon and Elenwë had married. If there was ever a silence then, it was a companionable and happy one. Now the silence was like a black pit, and they could only be grateful that they were in it together. As they had made their terrible journey, they had been closer than ever, their bonds tested and marred by blood and heartbreak.

They had been five. Five happy, healthy Elves around the fire, gazing up at the stars.

Now they were three.

Tears tingled painfully in Aredhel’s eyes. Losing Argon had been the final strike the wall of her stoicism could bear, but still her reflex was to fight back her emotions even if she was doomed to lose. Fighting always made it worse. She felt her face contort against her tears, felt her throat constrict, and when she finally had to surrender, the fall of her tears was a great relief.

She wanted to reach for Turgon’s and Fingon’s hands on either side of her, but instead she clasped her arms around herself even tighter. They were both so fragile, their losses greater than what she could comprehend, and she could not afford to break them with her own pain.

Turgon might never have woken from the injuries he had sustained in trying to rescue Elenwë. Might have succumbed to heartbreak as so many other Elves had on their journey. And Fingon… Fingon they could have lost a hundred times over, weakened as he was even before the Helcaraxë took its toll on them. But now that was all over, Maedhros lost long ago to Morgoth’s thirst for Elven blood.

She had watched Fingon closely as Maglor told them what had happened. Fëanor’s death. Maedhros’ capture. Something of clarity had come over Fingon then, freedom from whatever power Maedhros had long held over him. Seeing Fingon finally open his eyes to the world again had given Aredhel the closest thing she had felt to happiness in a long time.

She needed her brothers. Needed it to be the three of them now and always. If it came down to two, she knew none of them would be strong enough to survive it.

* * *

Fingon rested his chin on his folded hands, staring out at the water. It made him think of Elenwë and her sailboat. Her “seduction by sea” as Fingon and Argon had teased Turgon back then.

It had been an amazing thing to watch Turgon fall in love. Wonderful for all of them to welcome Elenwë into their lives. All memories now tainted and ruined.

He had promised Elenwë he would look after Turgon. Had promised Argon he would stay with their family and protect them as Argon had.

Those promises were the only reason Fingon was still here, and that conviction was quickly eroding. Fingon glanced over his shoulder at the looming shadows of the mountains. Behind them was Thangorodrim, and within…

Fingon turned back to the lake, the emotions rising within him too much to bear. If Maedhros was dead, he would feel it, would know it. Instead, all Fingon had felt since hearing Maglor speak was an urgent need to go into Thangorodrim, more alive and more afraid than he had felt that day in the Ring of Doom so long ago. That he might lose Maedhros forever and would do anything to keep that fate at bay.

He had to go… but how could he break promises he had made to the dead and the living?

He and Turgon had only spoken of it once, that day when they were alone in the tent after Elenwë had died. There had been a distance between them ever since their argument after Fingon and Maedhros had declared themselves, a distance that had slowly closed as Turgon had comforted him through his heartbreak. That day in the tent, equally broken, they had embraced each other as brothers again.

Fingon looked at Turgon across from him. Turgon had almost died trying to rescue Elenwë. Would he understand? Would he forgive Fingon for risking the same thing?

Fingon was uncertain if he would ever be able to forgive himself if he did not go, now, to attempt to rescue Maedhros from Morgoth’s clutches.

Gathering his legs under him, Fingon slowly got to his feet. He had to clear his throat to manage anything above a whisper.

“I will bid you both good night,” he said.

Turgon and Aredhel looked up at him, willing some serenity into their faces for him. “Good night.”

Holding onto the strength the three of them had together, Fingon gathered his weapons from his tent and ran toward the shadow of the mountains.


	7. Chapter 7

Maedhros dropped the hand that had been absently stroking the side of his neck—skin still tingling with the memory of Fingon's kisses—and opened the door to the small house he kept on his family's sprawling estate. He stepped into the single large room that worked as his kitchen, dining room, salon, and studio and flung his cloak on the back of a chair. It was enough movement to reawaken the scent of the soap he had used in his quick bath at Fingon's before they had parted this morning. It was a fragrance he loved on Fingon's warm skin, in his dark hair; it smelled different his own skin.

"Where have you been?"

Maedhros would not give his father the satisfaction of knowing that he had startled him, so he turned slowly to face him where he stood in the corner of the kitchen, his heart hammering in his chest.

"Did you have need of me?" he asked on a bored sigh.

Fëanor leaned over the table on his knuckles, his shoulders high and tight like an animal about to charge. His eyes burned even in the pale light of Laurelin's awakening.

"There are more important things your hands, your mind, and your time could be accomplishing," Fëanor said, his voice an ever-burning coal in his breast, low and hissing.

Maedhros did not want one thought of Fingon to be tainted with his father's opinion. "What do you want, Father?"

"I want you at the forge in ten minutes," Fëanor said, unfurling from his aggressive posture and seeing himself to the door. When he passed close to Maedhros, Maedhros could not stop the reflex to take a step back—the flinch his father wanted.

As the door slammed shut, Maedhros felt the perfect bliss of the morning evaporate under his father's burning gaze. Hating himself, Maedhros changed his clothes and put all thoughts of Fingon out of his mind.

It was becoming harder to maintain, this battle of power between Fingon and Fëanor in Maedhros' mind. Someday one of them would win, and what disturbed Maedhros most was that he did not know who it would be.

* * *

Maedhros sat, legs outstretched, on a window bench, gazing out at the distant halo of light on the hill. Tirion. His father had left long ago on his journey there and ever since, Maedhros’ thoughts had been pulled southward. In their five years in exile Maedhros had mostly mastered himself not to linger long on thoughts and pining for his former home, his former life. Day to day, surrounded by his brothers, it was easy to pretend that nothing had changed.

But tonight it was difficult not to think of Tirion. Not to think of Fingon.

He had considered asking to accompany his father, even going secretly on his own, just to stand at the edge of the festival and see Fingon across the square. Just to know that the devastation that had ruined Fingon’s beautiful face was gone now, to know that he was all right.

Maedhros dropped his head back against the wall to drain the tears away before they could fall.

“I thought you and your melancholy were getting along better these days,” Maglor said, little more than a shadow in the doorway of the dark room.

“I’m fine,” Maedhros said with a sigh.

Maglor slid onto the bench to sit opposite him, one leg alongside Maedhros’ as if to trap him there, to talk. “It’s strange, isn’t it? To feel so close and so far away from everything?”

“If you’re just going to read my mind, why do you bother to ask?” Maedhros tried to smile to show that he was teasing when his low voice sounded sour.

Maglor returned the smile. “Do you think you could see him without wanting to be near him?”

“Someday I’ll have to be.” Maedhros gazed back out at the glow on the hill.

Maglor frowned. “Is it as bad as that?”

Fingon’s face reappeared in Maedhros’ mind. Shocked, crying, angry, betrayed. The fact that he had been able to walk away from Fingon in that state made Maedhros consider that perhaps he had never loved Fingon enough, had only ever been half in without realizing how easy his commitment was to break. He had fooled both of them into believing their love was eternal.

 _Not just once…_ Fingon had said the first time they had kissed, and he had meant it even then. It had taken a long time for Maedhros to realize the gravity of Fingon’s feelings, his own feelings, and when he thought he finally felt it he had been utterly changed, as if the world had always existed in semidarkness and then burst with colour. Maedhros could only hope that Fingon had let go of their supposedly eternal love for his own sake. He loved Fingon enough to wish him happiness, not to waste away in heartache.

Best that this had happened now, Maedhros often thought to comfort himself, before he could lead Fingon any further. Before he could give Fingon the ring he had made.

He had been so wrong about so many things.

“Maybe I’ll extend my stay in Formenos,” Maedhros said with a dark laugh. “A century should give everyone the time they need to heal before they see my wretched face again.”

“Maedhros—”

Suddenly the world truly was dark. The pale light of Telperion flickered out and for a second there was an explosion of golden light. And then there was nothing.

Maglor leapt to his feet. Maedhros brought his knees under him and stared out at the world, the light of the stars suddenly seeming very little indeed.

“Get Finwë,” Maedhros said, breaking their terrified silence. For one more moment he looked out at the glow of Tirion and tried not to wish he was there with Fingon, to soothe him and be soothed as the world went black around them.

* * *

“What are you doing!” Maedhros cried as he ran up the beach toward the bonfires and archers.

His father turned and looked at him, the flash of the flames igniting a red glow in his eyes. He did not answer. Fëanor did not deign to answer anyone anymore.

The archers had already loosed one round of flaming arrows that burned and crackled on the decks of the ships in the bay. Together they turned and lit more arrows.

“Stop this!” Not just with anger, Maedhros had to yell now to be heard above the roar of the flames, the crumbling and falling of masts into the sea. “Father!”

Fëanor had turned away from him after that first cry, watching the destruction.

“Father.” Maedhros came around in front of him, to make himself impossible to ignore. When his stare did not command Fëanor’s attention he took him by the shoulders. “Father, the others—”

Fëanor turned his searing gaze upon his son, his features a hideous contortion of hatred and pride. “What I have left behind I count now no loss. Let those that cursed my name, curse me still, and whine their way back to the cages of the Valar. Let the ships burn.” He seized the front of Maedhros’ shirt and threw him to the ground with a hiss. “Seize him.”

Maedhros did not know it was Celegorm and Curufin who had taken him until they had wrestled him to his knees, each arm held by one of them tight behind his back. Seeing them towering over him, the blaze of the fires glowing in their faces, only made him want to fight harder.

A fight that he had never fought. A fight that had he had been too much a coward to face when it had counted. A fight against his family, his father, anyone who would dare take Fingon away from him. A fight he should have started a long time ago.

All at once, like alchemy, the loneliness and fear and heartbreak that had been still and cold inside him burst into white-hot rage.

Maedhros twisted away from Celegorm harder and harder until Celegorm’s mercy forced him to let go before he broke his brother’s arm. Half free, Maedhros rebalanced himself to sweep his leg at Celegorm’s feet and knock him to the ground. Before Celegorm’s back hit the sand, Curufin dropped his knee into Maedhros’ back and laid him flat and breathless, wrenching his right arm back with none of the leniency Celegorm had shown him. Maedhros grabbed a handful of sand, spun himself over, and threw the sand in his brother’s eyes in the brief moment they were face to face. Curufin swore as he tumbled over.

Still barely able to take a full breath from being knocked to the ground, Maedhros could do little more than lay there on his back. Sparks floated up against the dark sky. There was nothing he could do to save the ships; Fëanor had won his permanent separation from his brothers, from all Elvendom. King of this new wild world.

Then there was an explosion, followed shortly by another.

Maedhros rolled onto his stomach, pushed himself up on his hands and knees. A rush of heat blasted against his face. Wood chips rained down on his shoulders.

Now the Noldor who stood on the shores waiting for the ships to return would know that the host of Fëanor neither needed them nor cared for them. He had used them for as long as he had needed them, to commit acts of sacrilege and murder, and abandoned them.

Fingon would be standing among them. Maedhros saw, as he had a thousand times, the betrayal and pain in Fingon’s face at their parting that night in Tirion. Now those awful moments were truly the end of them. All that had comforted Maedhros was the thought that he could watch Fingon from afar in their new lives in Beleriand, feel the distant glow of his happiness. It was the only light that had ever mattered to him and now it was gone from his life forever.

The fight, the light guttered out inside him. Then Fëanor glanced at him and smiled, and everything inside Maedhros flared to life again.

“Damn you,” Maedhros rasped, his throat burning with the smoke in the air. He glared at this man who was not his father. “Damn you!”

Pushing himself to his feet, Maedhros charged towards Fëanor, his love and duty to his family nothing but ashes now. Someone behind him grabbed his wrist and Maedhros turned around to seize Celegorm by the throat. Celegorm clawed at the wrist that held him—not to free himself, but to keep Maedhros in range so he could kick him savagely above the knee. Maedhros buckled, but did not fall; still, it gave Celegorm the opportunity to release them from each other. His fair face was so smug as he retreated Maedhros could not look at him. As he turned away, he immediately had to duck under the punch that Curufin swung towards him. Swiftly recovering to stand, he grabbed the back of Curufin’s arm at the wrist and above the elbow and used his leverage to bend him forward and kick him in the stomach. He let Curufin drop and looked back at Celegorm.

They circled each other—Maedhros to get out of Curufin’s reach as he lurched to his feet, Celegorm to put himself between his brother and his father.

As Maedhros was about to lunge forward, there was a flash of a blade in his peripheral vision. He glanced down, expecting to see blood, but the blade had been expertly threaded between his arm and his body. Now it swung up and pressed against his throat and Caranthir came up close behind him.

“Enough,” Caranthir growled in his ear, pressing them closer and closer together to restrain Maedhros in his hold.

“Do it.” Maedhros seized Caranthir’s arm and tried to force the blade closer and closer to his flesh, but Caranthir braced himself.

Celegorm eased out of his fighting stance. Curufin slowly got to his feet. Amrod and Amras were crossing towards them on one side, Maglor running on the other. It was only Maglor’s wide blue eyes that showed any horror at the destruction of the ships, at the violence.

Fëanor walked into the centre of the circle of them, to look only at Maedhros. “They are your brothers, _Nelyo_.”

Maedhros fought against Caranthir, trying to reach to strike the name from Fëanor’s mouth, a name that laid a claim on him Maedhros no longer wanted.

“You are all brothers,” Fëanor said. He turned to look at his other sons. “You are the sons of Fëanor and no one else matters.”

Maedhros watched their shadows on the beach grow longer as the flames climbed higher, wanting nothing more than to stand on board one of those ships and let the fire consume him too.

* * *

It took all seven of them to lift Fëanor’s body from the battlefield and run. To carry him as gently as they could, to salvage what few moments remained. Fëanor was not so gentle; borne on his sons’ shoulders, he screamed a curse at Angband behind them, seeming to send his voice even to the peaks of Thangorodrim.

They laid him down on the ground and all knelt where they had been standing, a tight circle around him. Blood seeped from the wound in his stomach and he was already pale. He opened his eyes, darkness eclipsing that ever-raging fire inside him. Maedhros was shocked, if not saddened, to stand above him and watch that eternal light go out.

The breaths still seethed in and out of Fëanor—with what few remained of them, he still did not want peace or quiet. He looked up at each of his sons, measuring them, silently charging them with those words they had spoken at the beginning of all of this. Maedhros heard them echo in his head and could not silence them. Among all the other wreckage that lay between he and his father, that oath remained cruelly intact. As he saw the conviction in his brothers’ faces around him Maedhros knew they heard the same thing in this moment.

Their father was going to die, and all any of them cared about was that damned oath.

Fëanor’s slowing gaze finally came up to Maedhros, and despite everything Maedhros could not bring himself to look away. Only with great effort was Fëanor still breathing and it cost him much to lift his hand and rest it heavily against Maedhros’ face. Maedhros flinched, but Fëanor’s darkening gaze demanded his attention. With a final arch against his pain, Fëanor stroked his thumb against his eldest son’s face and nodded at him.

As if there was still some understanding between them. As if every action before this had not insisted that he held no love for Maedhros any longer.

A nod. A coronation.

Fëanor’s lifeless hand slid down Maedhros’ face and dropped heavily to the ground, his long fight over. There was a moment of profound silence, the overwhelming being of Fëanor no longer raging, no longer creating, no longer demanding.

For a moment, Maedhros felt as scared as an orphan abandoned on these shores.

Then Curufin screamed, gripping his father’s ankles and doubling over with grief. Fëanor’s fire burned inside him as looked up at each of his brothers. When he looked at Maedhros he opened his mouth to speak, but his thought was interrupted. He leapt back from Fëanor’s body, his hands clutched in tight fists.

They had all barely turned their heads to watch Curufin when great flames burst from Fëanor’s body and sent them all scrambling back. It burned so high and so hot that Maedhros had to turn his face from the fire, but he stole one glance at the blackened form at the centre of it, saw it begin to crumble, armour and steel, flesh and bone. In the work of mere minutes, the fire burned itself out and left only ashes.

From their widened circle, they all looked at each other again with only shock and fear in their faces. Even Curufin glanced up at Maedhros with something akin to brotherhood, bound together by what they had witnessed.

Maedhros remembered how they had surrounded their grandfather’s body like this, as if more time spent this close to death would give them some understanding of it. That understanding had not come, not for Maedhros. Seeing Fëanor’s body reduced to ashes was a finality Maedhros had never faced, but could hardly doubt.

Now it was truly only the seven of them and Maedhros felt neither ready nor willing to take his place at the head of them.

On the other side of the battlefield, beyond the bodies and flames still burning from the balrogs’ assault, a small company was forming. As they approached the Noldor forces, a white flag went up among them.

Maedhros got to his feet, watching the faces of the other Noldor warriors and his brothers as they watched Morgoth’s creatures grow closer. He saw it then, a vision of battle after battle and fewer and fewer of them standing here. Lives given to Fëanor’s ambition, to the ashes of that ambition.

If Maedhros was to be king, then he would do whatever it took to spare his people’s lives—his brothers’ lives—from the destructive forces of both Morgoth and Fëanor. He could end it now.

“Maedhros?” Maglor looked at him, his blue eyes searching Maedhros’ face.

“I’ll go alone,” Maedhros said. He heard a sword draw beside him and glanced across at Celegorm, who stood bristling and ready to face Morgoth’s forces again. “Alone, Celegorm.”

With a reluctant nod, Celegorm sheathed his sword.

“Come back, Maedhros,” Curufin said as Maedhros walked past him.

“I will,” Maedhros said. The farther he walked from his brothers, the closer he walked towards Morgoth’s monsters, Maedhros had to suppress a small thought ringing in his head: that if he was killed now by Morgoth’s betrayal, he might wake again in Aman and be nearer to Fingon than he had been in what had felt like an eternity. And if the flames took his body too and utterly destroyed him, then he would not have a heart to feel so broken any longer.

Maedhros glanced back just once at his brothers watching from the hill. His first and only duty in life now was to protect them, and only in death would he finally be free to save himself.


End file.
